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 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM 
 IN CANADA 
 
 A Study in French Colonial Policy 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO, Ph.D., LL.B. 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT IN HARVARD 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
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 H. E. H. 
 
 DUPL. 
 
 Copyright, igoy. 
 By the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 
 
 Norfaaoli i^tfsa 
 
 J. 8. Gushing & Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 1 I,U5:'Af;/ 
 
 \ A 3 Q UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BAliBARA 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Not a few thoughtful readers have laid aside Park- 
 man's interesting little sketch of Canadian feudalism 
 with some desire to know more about an institution 
 which played such a picturesque and conspicuous part 
 in the stirring drama of the old regime in French 
 Canada. It was this desire that prompted, some ten 
 years ago, the beginnings of the present study, which 
 in due time was elaborated into a dissertation and 
 presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for 
 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science 
 at Harvard University, and which in 1900 was awarded 
 the Toppan Prize in that institution. The whole study 
 has since been revised, somewhat rearranged, and con- 
 siderably enlarged. It is now given to the press 
 with a feeling that, whatever its organic and incidental 
 defects, no apology need be offered for the publication 
 of a volume dealing with a topic so important in the 
 institutional history of New France, and yet hitherto so 
 slightly studied by writers on the policy and achieve- 
 ments of France in the New World. 
 
 It has been my aim to base the study of the structure 
 and workings of the seigniorial system in Canada wholly 
 upon primary materials, — to accept, so far as possible, 
 no point of importance from other than authoritative 
 sources. A general adherence to this policy has limited 
 the scope of the monograph to an uneven range of origi- 
 nal materials, and has of necessity seriously impaired
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 the symmetry of the study. If the discussion of the 
 various incidents of the system is not nicely adjusted to 
 their relative importance, this fault is perhaps due, not 
 so much to a defective sense of proportion, as to the fact 
 that an abundance of available data on some phases is 
 offset by a meagreness on others. If more attention is 
 given to the legal than to the economic aspects of the 
 system, it is because the materials, from their very 
 nature, deal more with the legal relations of sovereign, 
 seignior, and censitaire, than with the actual working 
 of these relations. 
 
 Most of the material from which information has 
 been gleaned is not at present accessible to the gen- 
 eral reader; much of it is still in manuscript, while 
 such of it as is in print is to be had, for the most part, 
 only in government publications issued in limited num- 
 bers more than a half-century ago and now not easy to 
 obtain. It is expected, however, that during the coming 
 year the more important documents bearing on the 
 seigniorial tenure will be published, under the editorship 
 of the present writer, by the Champlain Society of 
 Canada. 
 
 I should indeed be unmindful of the many obligations 
 under which I have been placed in the preparation of 
 this volume, were I not to record my very sincere appre- 
 ciation of the kind assistance cheerfully tendered me from 
 various quarters. More particularly must I thank the 
 Hon. R. W. Scott, secretary of state, Dr. A. G. Doughty, 
 Dominion archivist, and Mr. Benjamin Suite of Ottawa, 
 for aid in the acquisition of material. To Professor 
 Adam Shortt of Queen's University, under whose guid- 
 ance the study was begun, to Professors C. W. Colby 
 and F. P. Walton of McGill University, to Professor 
 G. M. Wrong of the University of Toronto, and to
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 Professors Emerton, Gross, and Haskins of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, I am indebted for various suggestions which have 
 proved helpful. Miss Magdalene Casey of the Dominion 
 Archives has carefully verified the references to unpub- 
 lished documents, and Miss A. F. Rowe of Cambridge 
 has rendered faithful expert service in the preparation 
 of the manuscript for the press. Most of all, however, 
 must I acknowledge a heavy debt of gratitude to my 
 kind friend and former master, Professor Edward Chan- 
 ning, whose inspiration, guidance, criticism, and encour- 
 agement have been of unfailing value to me at all stages 
 of the study. 
 
 WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
 April, 1906.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Land-Tenure Systems and National Progress . . . . i 
 
 The Origins of Feudalism 2 
 
 Feudal and Seigniorial Tenures 4 
 
 Seigniorial Obligations in France 5 
 
 The Coutumes 6 
 
 Codification of the Coutumes 7 
 
 The Custom of Paris 8 
 
 promulgafion of the custom of paris in canada ... 9 
 
 Unsuitability of the Custom to the Needs of the Colony . lo 
 
 The Decay of Seigniorialism in France 12 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS, 1 598-1666. 
 
 The Discovery of the St. Lawrence Valley .... 17 
 
 Early Attempts at Colonization 18 
 
 Seigniorial Grants at Quebec, i 608-1 627 21 
 
 The Company of One Hundred Associates 22 
 
 Seigniorial Grants made by the Company, i 634-1 663 . . 25 
 
 Establishment of Royal Government in New France . . 27 
 
 The Company of the West Indies 30 
 
 Its Surrender of the Right to make Seigniorial Grants . 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS, 1666-1760. 
 
 Seigniorial Grants made by the Royal Officials • • • 35 
 
 Revocation of Grants remaining Uncleared .... 36 
 
 Growth of Seigniorial Abuses 39
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The Arrets of Marly, 171 i 
 
 Refusal of the King to make further Grants 
 Report of Catalogne on the State of the Seigniories 
 
 Renewal of Seigniorial Grants 
 
 Later Progress of the Seigniorial System 
 
 42 
 
 45 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 SO 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 Forms and Conditions of Land Tenure in the Colony 
 Grants En Franc A leu and En Franche Aumone 
 Grants En Fief or En Seigneurie 
 Obligations of the Seignior to the Crown 
 Fealty and Homage 
 
 AVEU ET DENOMBREMENT .... 
 
 Obligation to Subgrant Lands {Jeu de Fief) 
 Royal Policy in Regard to Subinfeudation 
 
 Quint and Relief 
 
 The Obligation of Military Service . 
 
 Settlement of the Carignan Regiment in the Colony 
 
 Royal Reservations imposed upon the Seigniors 
 
 52 
 53 
 54 
 55 
 56 
 57 
 58 
 61 
 62 
 64 
 67 
 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 Grants En Arriere Fief 77 
 
 Obligations of Sub-seigniors to Seigniors 78 
 
 Grants En Censive or En Roture 79 
 
 Nature of the En Censive Concessions 80 
 
 Evils arising from the Subdivision of Small Holdings . . 82 
 
 Obligations of the Habitant to his Seignior .... 85 
 
 Cens et Rentes 86 
 
 Nature and Amount of this Payment 87 
 
 Seigniorial Exactions and the Arrets of Marly ... 89 
 
 LoDS ET Ventes, their Nature and Amount .... 96 
 
 Droit de Retrait 97
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XI 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 Origin and Nature of the Banalites in France 
 The Right of Mill Banality in Canada 
 Official Regulations relating to the Mills 
 Progress of the Milling Industry 
 
 The Royal Decree of 1686 
 
 The Banal Obligation in France and in Canada 
 Unsatisfactory Condition of the Colonial Mills 
 Official Intervention in the Interest of Improvement . 
 Questions as to the Extent of the Seignior's Banal Rights 
 
 The Obligation of Oven Banality 
 
 Official Objections to its Enforcement in the Colony . 
 The Banal Obligations not Burdensome before 1760 
 
 PAGE 
 lOI 
 
 102 
 
 105 
 106 
 III 
 112 
 
 117 
 121 
 122 
 125 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 Nature and Extent of the Corvee Exactions 
 Official Regulation of the Seignior's Rights 
 
 The "King's Corvee" 
 
 Seigniorial Reservations .... 
 Nature and Extent of these Reservations 
 
 Seigniorial Prohibitions 
 
 Fishing and Hunting Rights .... 
 Minor Seigniorial Privileges 
 
 127 
 128 
 132 
 133 
 134 
 
 139 
 140 
 141 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 Early Judicial Administration in New France . • . .145 
 
 Gradations of Seigniorial Jurisdiction 147 
 
 Haute Justice 148 
 
 MoYENNE Justice 15° 
 
 Basse Justice 151 
 
 Infrequent Use of Judicial Powers by Seigniors . . .152
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Relation of Seigniorial to Royal Courts 153 
 
 General Character of the Colonial Judicial System . .156 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 Honorary Rights of Seigniors 159 
 
 The Noblesse in France and in Canada 161 
 
 Jean Talon, Comte d'Orsainville and Baron des Islets . .162 
 Francois Berthelot, Comte de St. Laurent . . . .165 
 The Baronies of Cap Tourmente, Pobomcoup, and Portneuf . 166 
 
 The Barony of Longueuil 167 
 
 The Chatellenie of Coulonge 169 
 
 The Marquisates of Sable and Miscou 170 
 
 The Minor Nobility 171 
 
 Character and Condition of the Noblesse . . . • 173 
 
 The Gentilshommes and the Frontier Wars . . . .176 
 Relation of the Noblesse to the Seigniorial System . . 177 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Economic and Religious Motives in French Colonization . 178 
 Support given to the Seigniorial System by the Church . -179 
 
 Seigniories of the Jesuits 180 
 
 Seigniories of other Orders and Institutions . . . .181 
 
 Relation of the Seigniory to the Parish 182 
 
 The Seigniorial Right of Advowson 185 
 
 Superior Management of the Ecclesiastical Seigniories . 186 
 
 Administration of Justice in the Church Fiefs . . .187 
 
 The Church as a Bulwark of Seigniorialism . . . .188 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM UNDER BRITISH 
 ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Articles of Capitulation and Tenure of Lands . . . 189 
 The Guarantees of the Treaty of Paris 191
 
 CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 Land-granting Policy of the New Administration 
 Difficulties in the Application of English Law 
 Views of Governor Carleton .... 
 
 Views of Maseres 
 
 The Seigniorial System administered in a Changed 
 
 Quebec Act of 1775 
 
 The American Invasion and Military Service . 
 The Loyalists and Extension of Socage Tenures 
 Beginnings of the Movement for Commutation . 
 Legislative Investigation of 1790 
 Constitutional Act of 1791 
 
 Spirit 
 
 PAGE 
 194 
 
 199 
 
 202 
 204 
 209 
 211 
 214 
 215 
 216 
 221 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Canada Trade Act of 1822 224 
 
 Canada Trade and Tenures Act of 1825 225 
 
 Facilities for Voluntary Commutation of Tenures . . . 226 
 
 Dissatisfaction of the People with this Policy . . . 227 
 
 Relation of the Tenure System to Popular Discontent . 233 
 
 Rebellion of i 837-1 838 236 
 
 Durham's Report and its Description of the Seigniories . 237 
 
 Further Legislative Investigations, 1843 239 
 
 Growth of the Movement for Abolition 242 
 
 Seigniorial Tenures Abolition Act, 1854 245 
 
 The End of Seigniorialism in Canada 251 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 253 
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PRINTED MATERIALS . . 267
 
 The physiognomy of a government may be best 
 judged in its colonies, for there its features are magni- 
 fied and rendered more conspicuous. When I wish to 
 study the merits and faults of the administration of 
 Louis XIV, I must go to Canada ; its deformity is 
 there seen as through a microscope. — Alexis de 
 TocQUEViLLE, The Old Regime and the Revolution.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM IN 
 CANADA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 If the respective colonial policies of France and England in 
 North America stand somewhat sharply in contrast with each 
 other, this contrast is due, in no small measure, to the different 
 circumstances in which the two parent states found themselves 
 in regard to their own internal development at the beginning of 
 the era of colonial expansion. The whole system of land tenure, 
 including the system of public and private relations based upon 
 the possession of land, is by no means the least reliable gauge 
 of the general position which a state has reached in the scale of 
 political, social, and economic evolution ; for, as every careful 
 student of institutional history knows, the progress of nations 
 has been reflected, step by step, in the development of customs 
 and laws relating to the tenure of landed property. The system 
 of landholding introduced by any state into its colonies, and its 
 liberal or strict administration of such system, may very well 
 serve, therefore, as an index to the general breadth or narrow- 
 ness of its colonial policy. 
 
 Into her North American territories France introduced, in 
 fhp <;pvp nfppnth rentiiry , that complex code of relations based 
 upon the holding of land commonly known as th^_seignk)rial 
 _system._ This system, the essential incidents of which had been 
 developed from the feudal organization of an earlier period, the 
 French authorities in Canada fostered and elaborated for more 
 than a century, modifying it to suit the needs of pioneers
 
 2 777^ EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 in a new land, and giving to Canadian feudalism a character 
 different in several important respects from that w^hich marked 
 the system in the parent state from which it was derived. 
 With the passing of Canada into English hands in 1760, the 
 maintenance of the system and its future development were 
 committed to the somewhat unsympathetic care of the new 
 suzerains, who continued it in existence for almost a century 
 longer. The ladli ght of feudalism was thus more prol onp^^d 
 in French X.ajada than ill any oth(^r territory rDiitrnl]pd_by_a 
 
 Fiirnppan <s1-afp or ppoplpH Viy mpn of Fnrnppan <i\(\rV 
 
 As to the origin of the feudal relation, students of institutional 
 history have never found themselves in complete agreement. Its 
 beginnings have been sought, without entire conclusiveness, both 
 in the institutions of Rome and in the elementary relations upon 
 which the rude organization of the Teutonic tribes was based. 
 With this controverted question of origins, however, it is not nec- 
 essary here to deal ; it is sufficient to note that by the middle of 
 the ninth century the feudal idea 7— that of service in return for 
 jjrotection — had become clearly prominent in determining social 
 and political relations throughout the greater part of Western 
 Jlurope. Owing to the economic and military conditions under 
 which the peoples of this part of Europe found themselves dur- 
 ing the next two or three centuries, the idea was naturally and 
 steadily elaborated into an extensive system of personal rela- 
 tions based upon the tenure of land. 
 
 At this stage, feudalism might have been defined in general 
 as a system of social and political relations founded on the tenure 
 of landed property and resulting from the absence of a strong 
 central power. Such absence of authority cast the whole burden 
 of preserving order, and of forestalling a reign oifaustrecht, upon 
 certain powerful men in every community; and it was by the 
 attempts of these men to provide protection for their dependents 
 in the most natural way that the various feudal relations were 
 developed and strengthened. This most natural way seemed to 
 be that, in return for grants of land, the magnates of each com- 
 munity should be assured of what was at the time of the utmost 
 value to them, — service and support in time of war. The man 
 who took land from a lord put himself under obligation to appear
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 3 
 
 in arms with his followers at the summons of his chief. He, in 
 turn, distributed lands to these followers subject to a similar 
 obligation ; and this process might be several times repeated. 
 Thus the feudal system created a military hierarchy, in which 
 each tenant of lands from humblest to highest was liegeman to 
 his immediate feudal superior. Service and submission to juris- 
 diction as the price of enfeoffment were the essential phe- 
 nomena of feudalism in its early form. The lord gave and 
 guarded ; the vassal took and served. 
 
 Although this primary feudal idea was essentially the same 
 throughout Western Europe, the elaboration of relations 
 founded upon it was guided by no uniform principles. In 
 different parts of the country and among different classes of 
 the population it developed as conditions and environment 
 seemed to dictate. Consequently it never at any stage in its 
 evolution presented exactly the same features throughout the 
 whole feudal area. Among the military classes the obligation 
 of military service was kept well in the foreground until the 
 fourteenth century, but with the agricultural classes this obli- 
 gation never had a like prominence. With them the bond 
 of mutual service and protection, while always existent, was 
 not the most essential relation, but certain obligations of a 
 non-military nature characterized more prominently the rela- 
 tions between the landed lord and his dependents. These 
 non-military obligations, which are sometimes emphasized as 
 seigniorial or manorial rather than feudal, were of wide scope 
 and variety, and in extent and importance varied greatly in dif- 
 ferent parts of Western Europe, and even in the same part at 
 different periods in the evolution of the system. Indeed, it is 
 this kaleidoscopic shifting of incidents which has given feu- 
 dalism a history so complex as to defy description in general 
 terms. 
 
 The feudalism of France had a more consistent development 
 than that of any other nation ; but even in France there was 
 at every stage a marked absence of any uniformity or homo- 
 geneity. In general, however, the steady growth of the 
 central power from the twelfth century onward reflected itself 
 in the declining importance of the feudal military obligation
 
 4 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 and the growing prominence of the non-military duties. The 
 altered conditions and methods of warfare, and the estab- 
 lishment of standing armies under the control of the monarchy, 
 gave to the feudal array a steadily decreasing importance in the 
 general military organization ; until by the fifteenth century the 
 system had almost completely lost its characteristic feudal 
 features, and had throughout France become predominantly 
 seigniorial in character. 
 
 Of the various non-military obligations imposed upon all 
 feudal dependents, one of the earliest and most general was 
 that of paying certain annual dues, or redevances. The most 
 common of these was the payment known as the cens et rentes, 
 which at an early period became more or less definitely fixed in 
 amount either by contract between seignior and dependent or 
 by the custom of the seigniorial jurisdiction. Other payments 
 were required, not annually, but upon the occasion of transfers 
 of dependent lands ; for, as the seigniorial relation was, in the 
 earlier stages of the system at any rate, largely a personal one, 
 the successor to lands within a fief, whether by purchase or by 
 inheritance, was required to secure by the payment of a fine 
 the permission of his superior to the establishment of this rela- 
 tion. In the thirteenth century the exaction of a fine, known as 
 the lods et ventes, upon mutations of small holdings may be 
 said to have become general throughout the greater part of 
 France. 
 
 Along with these dues developed the various seigniorial 
 monopolies, or rights of the seignior exclusively to supply cer- 
 tain services required by the landholders within his jurisdiction. 
 These were the various banal rights {banalites), examples of 
 which are to be found from the tenth century onward. The 
 seigniors provided grist-mills, wine-presses, ovens, and various 
 other facilities of a similar nature, and assumed the right to 
 compel their dependents to make use of these, and of these 
 alone, upon payment of charges regulated by the customs of 
 the various jurisdictions. From the tenth to the fifteenth cen- 
 tury the number and the scope of these banal rights seem to 
 have steadily expanded, but more widely, of course, in some 
 parts of France than in others.
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. $ 
 
 The corvee, or obligation of the dependent to give his seign- 
 iorial lord a number of days of free labor in each year, is 
 another incident which made its appearance at a very early 
 stage in the development of the system. At first the amount 
 of labor which might be exacted seems to have been indefinite, 
 and to have depended largely upon the wish of the seignior or 
 lord ; but, as time went on, both the number of days and the 
 conditions under which the labor might be exacted were fixed 
 by the custom of the neighborhood. 
 
 By the close of the thirteenth century all of the foregoing 
 rights had become sources of emolument to the French seignior- 
 ial magnate ; ^ but even at this period they did not exhaust his 
 list of privileges, for he possessed in addition various rights of 
 jurisdiction and a number of honorary privileges, which might, 
 and usually did, prove of pecuniary advantage to him. Within 
 the confines of his fief the lord exercised the right of adminis- 
 tering justice either in person or through appointed judicial 
 officers, and of taking to himself whatever profits accrued from 
 fines, fees, and forfeitures. Different degrees of judicial power 
 came to be distinguished ; but in France many of the seigniors 
 assumed complete and unUmited rights of jurisdiction over their 
 dependents, and retained these rights until, with the growth 
 of the royal power and the consequent encroachments of the 
 royal courts, feudal justice became subordinated to royal. It 
 was not, however, till the fifteenth century that this subordination 
 had been completed in the greater part of the kingdom. 
 
 The honorary privileges of the seigniors, at first few and 
 unimportant, came in time to form a rather formidable category. 
 In this matter there was perhaps a greater lack of uniformity 
 than in regard to the pecuniary rights ; and custom did not, as in 
 case of those rights, seem to crystallize into very definite princi- 
 ples. Some of these privileges, such as the right of the lord 
 to hunt over the lands of his dependents, came to be numbered 
 among the most harsh and odious incidents of the system. 
 
 ^ On the origin and development of these various seigniorial incidents, see 
 Renauldon, Traite Historique et Pratique des Droits Seigneuriaux {l^jd^); Achille 
 Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions Fran<;aises (1892); Adhemar Esmein, Cours 
 El'ementaire d'' Histoire du Droit Fran<;ais (1905); and E. D. Glasson, Precis 
 Elementaire de V Histoire du Droit Fran^ais (1904).
 
 6 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 Throughout this development the feudal military obligation 
 still maintained its existence ; but, since the disorganized condi- 
 tions which had given prominence to that feature several cen- 
 turies before no longer characterized France, its importance had 
 become wholly secondary. By the fifteenth century the two 
 most distinguishing characteristics of feudalism — military ser- 
 vice and unsubordinated private justice — had been completely 
 undermined by the waxing strength of the monarchical power ; 
 and from this time onward the development of the other features 
 makes up the history of the seigniorial system. 
 
 It has been pointed out that the nature and extent of the 
 various rentals {I'edevmtces) and other seigniorial obligations 
 were fixed in different parts of France by local custom. To 
 this rule, however, there was one important exception, — the 
 considerable part of France, commonly known as the pays de 
 droit ^crit, in which the definite and well-known rules of Roman 
 law were applied. The exact limits of French territory within 
 which this written law continued in existence are difficult to de- 
 fine precisely ; but in general XhQpays de droit ecrit comprised the 
 southern provinces of France, where Roman influence had natu- 
 rally been most strongly stamped. Within this area relations 
 were usually determined by Romsfti law modified very consider- 
 ably by local custom. In the remaining parts of France,^ known 
 as the pays de coutimie, or pays coiitiimiers, they were regulated not 
 by written law but by the long-standing customs of the various 
 jurisdictions. The number of these jurisdictions was very large, 
 and in extent and importance they differed greatly ; hence 
 one finds a bewildering number of local coiitimies, some apply- 
 ing to extensive and populous districts, others restricted in their 
 application to single small fiefs.^ 
 
 These bodies of local customary law had the advantage of 
 being indigenous, and of adjusting themselves to local environ- 
 ment ; but they had the cardinal defects of not being precise, 
 and of presenting the greatest variation from place to place 
 
 1 See the map of the two regions in J. Brissaud, Manuel d^Histoire du Droit 
 Franfais (1904), 152. 
 
 2 On this decentralization of the French legal system, see Viollet, Histoire du 
 Droit Civil Franfais (1893), 149-150; and Glasson, Precis Elementaire de V His- 
 toire du Droit Franfais, 169-186.
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 7 
 
 throughout the kingdom. It was to obviate the former of these 
 defects that the movement for the redaction, or codification, of 
 the customs was begun. Unofficial codifications began to appear 
 as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, but these 
 seem to have been neither exact nor complete ; it was not until 
 the closing years of the century that the first compilations 
 under official patronage were made.^ During the first half of the 
 fifteenth century a few of the customs, notably those of Anjou, 
 Maine, and Poitou, were codified under the auspices of the 
 authorities of these respective provinces without any instigation 
 from the monarchy.^ The desirability of codifying the customs 
 had, however, become apparent; and in 1453 a royal ordinance 
 of Charles VII commanded that all the local customs should be 
 forthwith collected by a procedure which was definitely set forth 
 in the ordinance, and that the compilations should be transmitted 
 to the king for the approval of his parlement? The response to 
 this ordinance was not general, however ; and Louis XI, who 
 came to the French throne a few years later (146 1), seems to 
 have had in mind the desirability of a single cojtttime, or system 
 of common law for the whole kingdom, rather than a continuance 
 of the policy of compiling and stereotyping the various local 
 bodies of customary law.* At any rate, he did little or nothing 
 to advance the work of local codification which his father had 
 begun.^ Under Charles VIII and Louis XII — during the 
 closing years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth 
 century — the work was, in obedience to royal decrees, pushed 
 rapidly on ; and in a short time a large number of the customs 
 had been officially put into written form and approved. 
 
 It was during the reign of Louis XII that the first official 
 
 ^ Klimrath, Etudes sur les Coutumes (1837), ch. i. 
 
 2 Viollet, Histoire du Droit Civil Fran^ais, 142. 
 
 ^ Ordonnances des Rois de France de la Troisieme Race (Paris, 1 729-1849), xiv. 
 312-313. Part of this ordinance is as follows : " Nous voulans abreger les procez 
 et litiges d'entre nos subjectz, et les relever de mises et depens, et mettre certainete 
 es jugemens tant que faire se pourra, . . . ordonnons et decernons, declarons et 
 statuons: que les coustumes, usages, et stiles de tous les pays de nostre royaume 
 soyent redigez et mis en escrit." 
 
 * Viollet, Histoire du Droit Civil Frati(ais, 145. 
 
 ^ Isanabert, Recueil General des Anciennes Lois Fran(aises, xi, 458.
 
 8 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 codification of the custom of the viscounty and provostship of 
 Paris was accomplished, in 1510, though before that date there 
 had been unofficial and incomplete compilations of the custom- 
 ary law of this jurisdiction.^ The work of official compilation 
 was performed by commissioners designated by the king; 
 and their work, when finished, received the approval of the 
 Parliament of Paris.^ This first official codification regulated 
 seigniorial and other relations during a period of only seventy 
 years; for in 1579 a revision was ordered by Henry III, and in 
 the following year was accomplished by a commission under the 
 presidency of the celebrated jurisconsult, Christofle de Thou.^ 
 
 In this revision a number of important changes were made, 
 and the general arrangement of the custom was much improved. 
 As thus revised, the Custom of Paris consists of sixteen titles 
 {titres) or divisions, each of which is divided into a number of 
 chapters, and these again are subdivided into articles or sections. 
 In all there are three hundred and sixty-two articles, numbered 
 consecutively. The form is eminently satisfactory, and the 
 various rules are set forth with marked clearness and brevity. 
 On the whole, the Custom of Paris is distinguished chiefly by 
 its thoroughly native spirit : there is in it little of Roman, 
 and still less of canon, law. These various characteristics, as 
 well as the fact that it formed the groundwork of the legal sys- 
 tem in vogue at the national centre, served to give it from the 
 outset a certain prestige over the other French couUimes, and in 
 the subsequent revisions of the customs of other jurisdictions 
 caused it to exert a very perceptible influence.* Although it 
 formed the general code of law regulating civil relations within 
 the viscounty and provostship of Paris, it might be modified at 
 any time by royal ordinance or decree. 
 
 ^ Buche, Essai sur V Ancienne Coutume de Paris aux xiii' et xiV Siecks, in 
 Nouvelle Revile Historique, viii. 45-86. 
 
 2 Klimrath, Etudes sur les Couiumes, ch. i. 3 JhiJ^ ch. ii. 
 
 * There are at least sixteen commentaries on the Coutume de Paris, — those 
 of Dumoulin (1539), Charondas (1582), Chopin (1586), Fortin (1595), Pithon 
 (1601), Troncon (1618), Tournet (1623), Guerin (1634), Brodeau (1658), Ricard 
 (1661), Ferriere (1679), Bobe (1683), Duplessis (1699), Lauriere (1699), Le 
 Mattre ( 1 700), Auzault (1708). Some of these have passed through several editions. 
 The most serviceable of the various commentaries are mentioned below, p. 264.
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 9 
 
 This was the system of law which, in 1664, Louis XIV in- 
 troduced by royal arret into his colony of New France,^ ordain- 
 ing that, except in so far as its provisions should be from time 
 to time modified by royal edicts or by the decrees of the local 
 authorities, it should form the rule of law regulating all colo- 
 nial relations. The colony was therefore equipped, almost on 
 the threshold of its history, with a complete and well-developed 
 code of customary law. 
 
 While the action of the French king and his advisers in pro- 
 viding a uniform system of jurisprudence for Canada was 
 perfectly natural, and quite in accordance with the policy which 
 the French government was pursuing at the time, the choice of 
 this custom from among the many then in operation was per- 
 haps not altogether a fortunate one. In many ways the Cus- 
 tom of Paris was, as a code of laws, superior to its contemporaries ; 
 but it was adapted to the circumstances of a thickly populated 
 and highly developed community, not to the needs of pioneer set- 
 tlers in a new land. Furthermore, the population of the colony 
 upon which it was imposed was very largely of Norman 
 origin; 2 for most of the earliest settlers in New France came 
 from the rugged old Norman ports of Dieppe, Rouen, and 
 Honfleur. Many came from Perche, and a few from other 
 provinces of France ; but, while it is true that between 1627 and 
 1664 the immigrants included many from Aunis, Poitou, Brit- 
 tany, Saintonge, and even from Paris and its immediate vicinity, 
 the Normans continued to form a substantial portion of the in- 
 flux.^ The colonial church registers, which have been kept with 
 scrupulous care, show that of the considerable number of settlers 
 who came to Canada during the decade after 1664 more than 
 half were of Norman stock ; and the strength of the Norman 
 
 ^ See below, p. 31 ; also Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, ch. v. 
 
 2 See Suite, Origin of the French Canadians, in Royal Society of Canada, 
 Proceedings, 1905, Memoires, sec. ii. 99 ff. 
 
 8 Ferland {Cours d^ Histoire du Canada, i. 511-516) has traced the origin of 
 about four hundred immigrants to Canada during the period 1615-1666. Of 
 these 125 were from Normandy, 57 from Perche, 37 from Aunis, 34 from Poitou, 14 
 from Brittany, and 13 from Saintonge. Paris contributed only 20. On this point 
 see also Rameau, La France aux Colonies (1859), ch. vi ; and Salone, La Coloni- 
 sation de la Nouvelle-France (1906), 112-113,
 
 lO THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 element in the colony is further attested by the fact that in 1680 
 an official estimate declared that at least four-fifths of the colonial 
 population either were Normans by birth or by parentage, or had 
 married Norman wives. The settlers who came from Paris and 
 its environs were for the most part officials, priests, and mer- 
 chants, who took up their abode in the towns ; the Normans, on 
 the other hand, were mainly peasants, who went on the land. 
 Thus it came about that, while the Norman element dominated 
 the colonial population as a whole, it was overwhelmingly strong 
 among the " habitants," as the people of the colonial seigniories 
 were called. Since, then, the greater part of the colonists were 
 most familiar with the Coiitmne de Normandie (codified in 
 1583),^ the introduction of this custom, while it might have 
 involved some difficulties, would undoubtedly have obviated 
 many of the evils which attended the working of the seigniorial 
 system in the colony. 
 
 The establishment of the Custom of Paris in New France had 
 some important and interesting consequences. In the first place, 
 there was always considerable difficulty in bringing the peas- 
 antry to a proper understanding of its provisions : again and 
 again the colonial courts and the administrative officials found 
 themselves called upon to settle disputes which, but for the 
 almost entire ignorance of the custom on the part of the dis- 
 putants, would not have arisen.^ Moreover, the circumstances 
 of the colony were such that some of the provisions were phys- 
 ically incapable of literal application and hence were allowed to 
 lapse into desuetude ; while others, although capable of being 
 applied, were abrogated because their enforcement would have 
 been out of harmony with the general policy of the crown in 
 the colony. As will be pointed out later, several important 
 provisions of the Custom of Paris had to be either considerably 
 modified by the authorities or entirely set aside ; ^ while some 
 others were tacitly disregarded by the Norman agricultural 
 population.'* 
 
 The compilation of the customs under official auspices in the 
 
 1 Klimrath, Etudes sur les Coutumes, 22-23. 
 
 2 For example, see below, p. 129. 
 
 8 Below, pp. iio-iii. 4 Below, p. 139.
 
 THE EUROPEAN- BACKGROUND. 1 1 
 
 sixteenth century marks an important epoch in the history of 
 French seigniorial relations ; for, while it did not stereotype 
 these relations in any strict sense, it gave them a degree of 
 definiteness which they had not hitherto obtained. ^ It did 
 not in any way, however, produce uniformity in the relations of 
 landed classes throughout France, but, on the contrary, seems 
 to have accentuated and perpetuated the heterogeneity. It is, 
 therefore, as difficult to draw a true general picture of French 
 seigniorialism in the seventeenth century as of French feudalism 
 in the twelfth or the thirteenth. The widest variation in the 
 nature and scope of seigniorial rights and duties prevailed in the 
 various jurisdictions : in some the seignior's rights were numer- 
 ous and extensive, in others few and of much less importance.^ 
 Some seigniorial privileges were recognized in almost all the 
 customs, as, for example, the right to the cens et rentes, and to 
 the lods et ventes, or relief ; others, like the right to demand cor- 
 vees, were recognized either with or without restrictions in the 
 majority of the compilations ; while some rights, like the banali- 
 ties, received recognition in but a small number of them. To 
 add to this lack of uniformity, there were important changes and 
 revisions of the customs at short intervals, a circumstance 
 which Voltaire had in mind when he spoke of " things changing 
 in France as often as coiittimes or post-horses." In these 
 revisions, seigniorial rights were added, extended, restricted, or 
 abolished as local circumstances seemed to dictate or permit, 
 with no general principle to serve as a guide.^ 
 
 After the beginning of the sixteenth century, moreover, there 
 was an increasingly large number of royal ordinances, decrees 
 of the Council of State, judgments of provincial intendants, 
 and various other manifestations of the rapidly growing royal 
 authority, all of which served greatly to modify the incidents 
 of the land-tenure system and the complex mass of relations 
 
 1 Klimrath, Etudes sur les Coutumes, ch. i. 
 
 2 On the extent of this variation, see Pardessus, Memoires sur V Origine du Droit 
 Cozitumier en France, in Memoires de I'Academie des Inscriptions, x. 666-765 ; 
 Laferriere, Coutumes de France dans les Diverses Provinces, in his Histoire du 
 Droit Francois (1858), vol. v; Glasson, Precis Eletnentaire de V Histoire du Droit 
 Franfais, 437-448. 
 
 ' See La Grande Encyclopedic, under "Coutume."
 
 12 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 built upon it.^ This development of the central power had 
 fundamentally altered the spirit of the system, even though the 
 outer shell had been for the most part preserved intact. The 
 seigniors, for example, still preserved their rights of private 
 judicial administration, but their powers in this domain were no 
 longer final : the growth of the royal courts had thoroughly 
 subordinated private to national jurisdiction. 
 
 The personal relation between the seignior and his depend- 
 ents also bore but little real resemblance to that which had, 
 several centuries before, formed a bond between the feudal lord 
 and his vassal.^ By the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 many of the seigniors were beginning to leave their rural man- 
 ors and take up their residence in the capital or in the other 
 large towns, leaving their seigniories in charge of bailiffs, who 
 collected the various dues and saw that the tenants or censitaires 
 performed their required corvees and other services. The move- 
 ment of the seigniors away from their holdings seems to have 
 gone on rapidly, until their absence became a prominent char- 
 acteristic of the seigniorial system. It is said that, before the 
 end of the seventeenth century, there were many seigniors in 
 France who had never visited their estates in the lapse of a 
 lifetime.^ The seignior came more and more to look upon his 
 fief as a source of revenue ; his interest in his dependents became 
 a wholly pecuniary one ; and hence the bailiffs who managed 
 the affairs of the seigniories were impelled by the very nature 
 of things to stretch the seigniorial rights and privileges to the 
 utmost productive point.^ The elasticity of some of the seign- 
 iorial incidents, and the varying protection against seigniorial 
 extortion afforded to the peasantry by the royal officers and 
 courts in different parts of France, added new causes of varia- 
 tion in the several jurisdictions. 
 
 1 See the list of decrees in Viollet, Histoire dii Droit Civil Francois, 151-155. 
 
 2 Manesse, Les Paysans el leurs Seigneurs avant ijSg (1895), ch. viii. 
 
 3 The extent and evils of this absenteeism are discussed in Taine, PAncien 
 Regime, ch. iii, and in Manesse, Les Paysans et leurs Seigneurs, ch. viii. 
 
 * Renauldon ( Traite Historique, 628) speaks in scathing terms of the seigniorial 
 bailiff : " He is a ravenous wolf let loose on the estate, who drains it to the last sou, 
 crushes the peasants, and renders odious the seignior, who finds it necessary to tol- 
 erate his extortion for the sake of the profits which accrue."
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 13 
 
 Thus, when the seigniorial system was transplanted from 
 France to the New World, its strength had already begun to 
 show inherent signs of decline. Absenteeism, and the resultant 
 severing of the personal nexus between the seigniors and their 
 dependents, together with the increasing importance of the 
 privileges which the seigniors as a class enjoyed, served to sap 
 the system of much of its pristine vitality. This vitality, how- 
 ever, through the close contact of the seigniors with their 
 dependents and the entire absence of any code of privileges, 
 it was destined to regain in New France to a very considerable 
 degree. With the direct personal relation of seignior to depend- 
 ent, with the prominence given to the military aspect, and 
 with the comparative paucity and simplicity of the seigniorial 
 rights and obligations, the land-tenure system of French Canada 
 bore a much closer resemblance to French feudalism of an 
 earlier period than to French seigniorialism of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries.^ To this circumstance must be 
 largely attributed the new lease of life which the system enjoyed 
 in the colony, and by which it was enabled to outlive its parent 
 stem in France. 
 
 When France undertook the planting of the seigniorial tenure 
 on the shores of the St. Lawrence, she was in theory and in prac- 
 tice a despotism. The two institutions, feudalism and absolutism, 
 had long since passed their era of antagonism, and through the 
 entire subordination of the former to the latter had become 
 reconciled. With its fangs drawn, feudalism was no longer 
 dangerous ; on the contrary, it might be, and was, used by 
 the crown in supporting the complete centralization of royal 
 power. The age of Louis Quatorze, during which seigniorialism 
 intrenched itself in Canada, may be said to have marked the 
 zenith of political centralization in France : the epigram " Uetat 
 c est moi " expressed no mere iiction of royal power. The politi- 
 cal organization of France was, in fact, as simple as its social 
 structure was complicated ; for all its lines converged upward, 
 and its base was as broad as the extensive dominions of the 
 Bourbons whether in Europe or elsewhere.^ 
 
 ^ See below, especially ch. iv. 
 
 * Cheyney, Etiropean Background of American History, 115-116.
 
 14 
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the chief councils 
 of the king were the Royal Council iconseil dii rot) — more often 
 called the Council of State {conseil d 'etat dii rot) — and the Par- 
 liament of Paris {parlement de Paris). The former was the 
 chief executive council of the realm, the body in which the king 
 issued his arrets and ordinances both for France and for the 
 colonies. This council was further brought into relation with 
 the affairs of New France in that it heard and determined 
 appeals from the intendant or from the Sovereign (Superior) 
 Council in the colony whenever these were transmitted to it. 
 The Parliament of Paris, on the other hand, was intrusted, 
 among other duties, with the registration of royal decrees and 
 ordinances. It had no appellate jurisdiction in the colony, and 
 hence its work is reflected there to little extent. 
 
 Subject, of course, to the will of the monarch, the direct control 
 and supervision of colonial affairs was, at the outset, in the 
 hands of the chief minister of state. When the beginnings of 
 settlement in New France were made. Cardinal Richelieu pos- 
 sessed among his various titles that of " grand master, chief, 
 and superintendent-general of the navigation and commerce of 
 France," and in virtue of this position exercised a general 
 oversight of colonial affairs. Indeed, the introduction of seign- 
 iorialism in New France has been commonly regarded as his 
 personal work.^ Mazarin took comparatively little interest in 
 the affairs of the colony ; but his successor, Colbert, gave 
 vigorous attention to the exploitation of French colonies in both 
 the West and the East. During his first few years in office he 
 made a carefulstudy of Canadian affairs, conducting a large part 
 of the correspondence with the colonial officials; but in 1669 
 the immediate administration of colonial affairs was turned over 
 to the minister of marine,^ who from this time down to the 
 period of the French Revolution was the medium of communi- 
 cation between all colonial officials and the king, countersigning 
 all the royal edicts and instructions which were sent out to New 
 France. Although there were at intervals changes in the occu- 
 
 1 "It was Richelieu who first planted feudalism in Canada" (Parkman, The Old 
 Regime in Canada, ii. 41). 
 
 ^ Petit, Les Colonies Fran^aises (1902), i. 15.
 
 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 1 5 
 
 pancy of this post, such changes brought about very little alter- 
 ation in the trend of French colonial policy ; for, during the 
 reign of Louis XIV especially, the hand of the monarch was 
 very influential in determining the course of affairs in the 
 colony. 
 
 A well-known writer on the institutions of the old regime 
 has pointed out that the merits and the faults of the French po- 
 litical, social, and economic system before the Revolution may 
 be best seen and studied in the colonial possessions of the 
 Bourbons, more particularly in Canada.^ This is because many 
 traditional obstacles which hinder the logical working out of gov- 
 ernmental policy in the mother land do not exist in a new 
 country. The development of feudalism in its later stages was 
 therefore more uniform and consistent in New France than in 
 Old, its workings were less obscured by the clouds of privilege, and 
 as a system it had much more symmetry. On the whole, Cana- 
 dian feudalism had all the merits of the system which formed its 
 background at home, while it lacked many of the odious inci- 
 dents that had served to make the latter a heavy burden upon 
 the agricultural classes of France. This fact is shown by the 
 different attitudes displayed toward the existing land-tenure sys- 
 tem by the peasantry in France and in Canada. 
 
 After 1760, when the colony passed permanently out of the 
 hands of the French monarchy, the background was very deci- 
 sively altered ; for England had, a full century before, swept 
 from her dominions the last of the important relics of feudal 
 tenure.^ The administration of the Canadian tenure system 
 now passed into strange and not altogether sympathetic hands, 
 its retention and development being due, not so much to a belief 
 in its utility and suitability as to a determination to carry 
 out literally the pledges made to the conquered race in the 
 articles of capitulation. Furthermore, the administration of 
 colonial affairs by the new suzerains was far less centralized 
 than it had been under the old ; for, despite the important 
 recrudescence in royal power and influence under George III, 
 the ultimate supremacy of Parliament in the direction of colonial 
 
 1 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, 299. 
 
 2 By statute 12 Charles II. c. 24 (1660).
 
 l6 THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND. 
 
 policy had become assured. Public opinion in the home country 
 now became an important factor in the determination of colonial 
 relations, a factor which under French rule had served in no 
 degree to mould the policy of the home authorities. For these 
 various reasons, the attitude of the English government toward 
 the seigniorial system in Canada was less consistent and less 
 decisive than had been the attitude of the French before 1760, 
 and was too often based upon a much less accurate knowledge 
 of colonial conditions. To this indecision and lack of definite- 
 ness in policy must be attributed in a considerable degree many 
 of the abuses which characterized Canadian seigniorialism under 
 British administration.^ 
 
 1 See below, ch. xi.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 1 598-1666. 
 
 During the first three decades of the sixteenth century, 
 Spanish, Portuguese, and EngHsh navigators coasted along 
 the northeastern shores of North America without discovering 
 the existence of the great river which drains the waters of the 
 inland lakes to the eastern seas. It remained for the navigators 
 of France, late though these were in entering the field of west- 
 ward exploration, to penetrate the valley of the St. Lawrence 
 and to discover its adaptabihty to colonization. 
 
 The Cartier expeditions of 1 534-1 535 may be said to mark 
 the beginning of French interest in the New World. While, 
 however, the work of the sturdy seaman of St. Malo served to 
 clear up the geography of the new region and to establish for 
 the Bourbon king a claim to sovereignty over the vast North- 
 land, the work of actual colonization was not yet to be begun ; 
 for the experiences of Cartier and Roberval were not such 
 as to encourage the hope that France would find in these regions 
 a second Mexico or a new Brazil. The country appeared en- 
 tirely devoid of mineral wealth ; the climate, as the two hiber- 
 nations of the explorers attested, was disastrously rigorous ; 
 and the soil did not appear to possess any very attractive agri- 
 cultural possibilities. All in all, the Cartier-Roberval expe- 
 ditions resulted in little but disappointment; and it is not to 
 be wondered at that France, rent asunder as she was by the 
 religious wars which marked the second half of the sixteenth 
 century, should have cast aside for the time being whatever 
 projects she may have been entertaining for the establishment 
 of a colonial empire in the valley of the St. Lawrence. 
 
 »7
 
 1 8 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 During this period, however, Norman and Breton fishermen 
 continued to visit the fishing banks of Terreneuve, and year by 
 year to garner the lucrative harvests of the sea ; and, while it 
 may well be doubted whether, during a full half-century following 
 the date of Roberval's voyage, even a single French vessel 
 passed beyond the Saguenay, the annual visits of the fishermen 
 sufficed, in the seaports of France at least, to keep alive the feel- 
 ing that these northern regions were within the French sphere 
 of influence. 
 
 Toward the end of the century peace returned to the French 
 people; and the issue of the Edict of Nantes in 1598 gave the 
 kingdom for the first time in fifty years an appearance of in- 
 ternal quiet. By a somewhat curious coincidence, it is in this 
 same year that one finds official France once again turning 
 its eyes to the northwestward. The possibilities of the St. Law- 
 rence region as a favorable field for the exploitation of the fur 
 trade had attracted the attention of the Marquis de la Roche, a 
 nobleman of Brittany, who possessed some influence at the royal 
 court. Some years previously La Roche had received a com- 
 mission empowering him to establish a colony in Newfoundland, 
 but misfortune overtook his enterprise even before his vessels 
 left the shores of France.^ He did not, however, abandon his 
 design, and in 1598 was successful in obtaining appointment 
 to the post of "lieutenant-general and governor of the countries 
 of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, the River of 
 the Great Bay, Norembega, and of the countries adjacent to the 
 said territories and rivers." ^ 
 
 Within this vaguely defined area La Roche was invested 
 with almost sovereign powers : he might make war and peace, 
 maintain an army, legislate, punish and pardon, found cities, 
 and erect fortifications. " We have given him power," runs his 
 commission more specifically, " to grant lands ... to gentle- 
 men and to those whom he shall consider persons of merit, in 
 the form of fiefs, seigniories, chatellenies, countships, viscount- 
 
 1 W2.W\xy\., Discourse 071 Western Planting, va. Maine Historical Society, Ctj/Z^^/t'owj,^ 
 2d series, ii. 26. 
 
 ■^ For La Roche's commission, January 12, 1598, see Edits et Ordomtances, 
 iii. 7-10.
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 1 9 
 
 ships, baronies, and other dignities, to be held in such manner 
 as he shall deem in keeping with their services, and on such 
 terms and conditions as shall conduce to the defence of the said 
 countries ; and to other persons of inferior rank at such charges 
 and annual rentals as he shall deem advisable, of which latter 
 we agree that they shall be exempt and discharged during the 
 first six years, or during such further period as our said lieuten- 
 ant-general shall believe to be right and necessary, excepting 
 always the duty of service in time of war." Thus, says Parkman, 
 was an effete and cumbrous feudalism to make its first lodge- 
 ment in the New World. ^ 
 
 Armed with these extensive powers and privileges, the Breton 
 nobleman made haste to assume the duties of his post. By the 
 terms of his commission he was, however, under obligation to 
 transport settlers to the new territories at his own expense, a 
 requirement in which he found the first obstacle to his enter- 
 prise, for it proved very difficult to persuade respectable French- 
 men to join his venture. He finally resorted to the jails of 
 Rouen, from which he obtained a band of sixty convicts ; ^ and in 
 due time the expedition sailed for the St. Lawrence. On reach- 
 ing Sable Island, off the Acadian coasts. La Roche landed 
 his convicts, while he cast about for a suitable place of settle- 
 ment on the mainland ; but by a sudden storm he was driven 
 back to France, and his miserable followers were left to their 
 fate on the almost barren island, where, five years later, a relief 
 expedition found less than a dozen survivors.^ 
 
 The disastrous outcome of La Roche's attempt did not, 
 however, entirely deaden French enterprise. During the next 
 quarter of a century many other men came to the front, all 
 professing eagerness to try their hands at the establishment of 
 settlements in Canada in return for a monopoly of the fur trade. 
 To one after another the desired opportunity was given ; but in 
 each case it took but a few years to show that the real aim was 
 to exploit the fur trade for personal enrichment, and that there 
 was little or no sincere desire to undertake the much less lucra- 
 
 ^ Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World (Frontenac ed.), ii. 54. 
 2 Biggar, Early Trading Companies of A^ew France, 41. 
 ^ Marc Lescarbot, Histoire de la N^ouvelle- France, ii. 396 ff.
 
 20 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 tive work of serious colonization. In vain the king revoked one 
 monopoly and granted another. Each new recipient promised 
 much and performed little, individuals and companies proving 
 very much alike in this respect; for each took out just as few 
 settlers as seemed absolutely necessary to lull the royal sus- 
 picions for the time being.^ 
 
 The work of these exploiters was, however, not altogether 
 barren of results ; for it was under the auspices of one of them 
 that Samuel Champlain was sent on his earlier voyages to 
 America. He it was who first secured for France and for 
 Frenchmen a permanent foothold in North America; he was 
 the real founder alike of Acadia and of New France. Clear in 
 his ideas and vigorous in their execution, this rugged seaman 
 of Brouage was admirably fitted to become the pioneer of French 
 colonization in the New World ; and, had he been favored with 
 even a moderate support by those in authority at home, his work 
 would have been far more valuable. Even as it was, his settle- 
 ment at Quebec became the nucleus of a powerful military 
 colony, which influenced the affairs of a whole continent for quite 
 a century and a half after its foundation. 
 
 From the time of its establishment in 1608 down to 1629, 
 when the colony passed for the time being into English hands, 
 Champlain's little settlement on the St. Lawrence had a tempestu- 
 ous existence. The few settlers sent out from time to time by 
 the various monopolists were a rough and unruly set of men 
 whom Champlain found very hard to control. Although his 
 legal powers were ample enough, he received so little finan- 
 cial aid from his superiors that it was only with the utmost 
 difficulty that he kept the settlement in existence at all. By the 
 terms of his various commissions he had a wide range of vice- 
 regal powers. He was military head of the colony, as well as 
 legislator, administrator, and supreme judge, with full authority 
 to arrange for grants of lands to settlers on such terms as he 
 might deem fit ; ^ and yet during the whole period intervening 
 
 ^ For a detailed account of the operations of these various monopolists and their 
 relations to the new colony, see Biggar, Early Trading Companies of New France, 
 chs. iii-iv. 
 
 2 " Commission de Commandant en la Nouvelle-France ... en faveur du Sieur 
 de Champlain," Edits et Ordonnances, iii. ii.
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 21 
 
 between 1608 and 1627 only three seigniorial grants appear to 
 have been made. Most of those who came out to the colony 
 during this interval seem to have had little interest in agricul- 
 tural pursuits; they sought to enrich themselves through the 
 exploitation of the fur trade, but showed no desire to acquire 
 lands. 
 
 The first of these three seigniorial grants was made in 1623 to 
 one Louis Hebert, described as "head of the first family settled 
 in the country." ^ The grant comprised the seigniory of Sault 
 au Matelot, near Quebec, to be held " on such charges and con- 
 ditions as shall be hereafter imposed." ^ Three years later 
 Hebert received a confirmation of this grant, with an extension 
 of the area comprised. 
 
 The second grant was that of the seigniory and barony of 
 Cap Tourmente to Guillaume de Caen in 1624. The grantee in 
 this case seems to have made a small beginning toward clearing 
 and cultivating his tract ; but, when the colony passed into the 
 hands of the Company of One Hundred Associates, his grant 
 was revoked, and he left the colony.^ 
 
 The third grant was that made on March 10, 1626, to the 
 " Reverend Fathers of the Society and Company of Jesus," 
 of the seigniory of Notre Dame des Anges, lying along the 
 river St. Charles, near Quebec* This grant, in which no con- 
 ditions or charges whatever are specified, is significant as be- 
 ing the first in a long series of grants made to the Jesuit order 
 in New France, the extent and value of which enabled the order, 
 before the British conquest, to become quite the largest indi- 
 vidual landholder in the colony.^ 
 
 So far as can be ascertained, these three were the only grants 
 made by the authorities in France down to 1627. Each of them 
 appears to have been made on the advice of Champlain ; and the 
 absence, in all three, of definite charges and conditions would 
 
 ^ The grant was made on February 4, 1623, by the Due de Montmorenci, the 
 confirmation on February 26, 1626, by the Due de Ventadour. See Titres des Seign- 
 eur ies, 373. 
 
 2 The words used were, " pour en jouir en fief noble aux charges et conditions 
 que lui seront ci-apres imposees." For the nature and incidents of tenure en Jief 
 noble, see below, p. 52. ^ See below, p. 166. 
 
 * Titres des Seigneuries, 53. ^ See below, ch. x.
 
 22 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 seem to show that no general policy with regard to the land- 
 tenure system had yet been formulated. In 1627, however, 
 Louis XIII decided to make a radical change in the adminis- 
 tration of the colony. Among his advisers Cardinal Richelieu 
 was now supreme, and it was mainly through his influence that 
 the change was decided upon. Flushed with his victories over 
 the Huguenots, the cardinal conceived the plan of forming a 
 great company which, in return for the grant of a monopoly of 
 the fur trade, should undertake the work of making a powerful 
 colony out of the struggling settlements in Canada.^ In accord- 
 ance with this plan, the Company of New France, more com- 
 monly called the Company of One Hundred Associates, was 
 organized; and in the spring of 1627 Cardinal Richelieu, on 
 behalf of the king, handed over to the new organization all the 
 territories claimed by France in North America " from the 
 coasts of Florida to the Arctic circle and from Newfoundland 
 west to the great lake commonly called the fresh sea," to be 
 holden in perpetuity as one immense fief.^ 
 
 The preamble of this charter states succinctly the royal 
 motives in taking this step. " Having in view," it declares, 
 *' the establishment of a powerful colony in order that New 
 France with all its dependencies may, once for all, become a 
 dependency of the crown without any danger of its being 
 seized by the king's enemies, — as might be the case if precau- 
 tionary measures are not taken against such a contingency, — 
 and wishing, likewise, to remedy the faults of the past, since 
 under the management of individuals who possessed the whole 
 of its trade the country has been left uncultivated and almost 
 wholly void of population . . . , His Eminence the cardinal 
 deems it incumbent upon him to apply a remedy and to 
 correct such abuses, thereby following the wishes of His 
 Majesty." 
 
 By the terms of the charter the company received its grant 
 
 ^ Georges d'Avenel, Richelieu et la Monarchie Absolue (1884-1890), iii. 221-224. 
 
 2 " Acte pour I'etablissement de la Compagnie des Cent Associes pour le com- 
 merce du Canada, contenant les articles accordes a la dite Compagnie par M. le 
 Cardinal de Richelieu," Edits et Ordonnances, i. 5- 1 1. The charter is dated April 29, 
 1627, but the letters patent confirming its terms were not signed by the king himself 
 until May 6, 1628 i^Ibid. 19).
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 23 
 
 **in full property, jurisdiction, and seigniory," subject only to 
 the condition of fealty, together with the payment, to each 
 successive king of France, of a gold crown weighing eight 
 marks.^ The company also received a complete monopoly of 
 the trade of the granted territories during a period of fifteen 
 years, such trade to be exempt from the French custom duties.^ 
 " It will be lawful," the charter continues, " for the said asso- 
 ciates to improve and to settle the said lands as they may deem 
 it necessary, and to distribute the same to those who will inhabit 
 the said country and to others in such quantities and in such 
 manner as they may deem proper; to give and to grant to 
 these such titles and honors, rights and powers, as they may 
 deem essential and suitable according to the qualities, merits, 
 and conditions of the original grantees, and generally upon 
 such charges, reservations, and conditions as they may think 
 proper." ^ 
 
 The company, on its part, undertook to transport to the 
 colony, during the first year of its operations, between two and 
 three hundred men of all trades, and during the ensuing fifteen 
 years to increase this number to four thousand of both sexes. 
 It agreed to provide for these settlers shelter and subsistence 
 for the first three years following their arrival in the colony, 
 an obligation, however, from which it was to be released " on 
 furnishing to each family of colonists a sufficient area of cleared 
 land to enable it to support itself, together with the necessary 
 corn for the first seeding, and subsistence until the first harvest." * 
 Upon the company was also imposed the responsibility, not 
 only of sending to Canada a sufficient number of priests and 
 missionaries, "for the purpose of converting the savage tribes 
 and of affording the consolations of religion to Frenchmen who 
 settle in New France," but also of maintaining these clergymen 
 unless the company should " prefer to give them cleared lands 
 sufficient to ensure them a living." ^ 
 
 A few days after the granting of this charter a supplementary 
 decree was issued, two of the provisions in which relate to the 
 granting of lands.^ By one of these clauses the directors of the 
 
 ^ Article iv. 2 Article vii. ^ Article v. * Article i. 
 
 ^ Article iii. 6 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 12-17.
 
 24 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 company were empowered to appoint, at various places, such 
 agents as they might think fit, "for the distribution of lands 
 and the regulation of conditions concerning the same." ^ By 
 the other provision it was ordered that a grant of land should 
 not exceed two hundred arpents in any individual case ; but it 
 was arranged that if, for any good reason, the directors should 
 desire to make a grant of larger area, they should " call together 
 as great a number of associates as possible," and that the 
 assent of these to the grant should be attested by the signatures 
 of at least twenty of them.^ 
 
 The organization of the Company of One Hundred Associates 
 was in due time completed, its capital being fixed at three hun- 
 dred thousand livres in one hundred shares of three thousand 
 livres each. Although each share might be again subdivided, 
 it was entitled to but one representative at the meetings of the 
 company. The hundred associates or shareholders, more than 
 half of whom were Parisians, elected a board of twelve direc- 
 tors and a president.^ 
 
 Little time was lost in assuming charge of the colony and in 
 appointing Champlain its governor. In the spring of 1628 the 
 first fleet of vessels laden with settlers, cattle, provisions, and 
 munitions set sail from Dieppe for Quebec ; ^ but the occasion 
 was extremely inopportune, for war had broken out between 
 France and England, and a fleet of English privateers under 
 the command of David Kirke was already lying in wait for the 
 company's vessels near the entrance of the St. Lawrence. 
 Intercepting the French vessels, Kirke overpowered and took 
 them to England. 
 
 In the following year (1629) the English commander once 
 more entered the St. Lawrence, and appearing before Quebec 
 
 1 Article vii. 
 
 2 Article xi. The arpent de Paris, which was the usual land unit of the colony, 
 is used either as a unit of length or as a unit of area. A lineal arpent is 
 the equivalent of 192 English feet. The superficial arpent comprises 0.32400 
 French hectares, and may be reckoned as about five-sixths of an English acre. The 
 term arpent is evidently from the Gallic aripennis, which has been identified with 
 the Roman actus or halfjugerum. 
 
 3 Biggar, Early Trading Companies 0/ New France, 137. 
 * Sagard, Histoire du Canada, iv. 858.
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 25 
 
 demanded its surrender. Champlain was in no position to offer 
 resistance, and the colony passed into English hands.^ By 
 these events the operations of the company were necessarily 
 suspended until 1632, when by the Treaty of St. Germain-en- 
 Laye the colony was handed back to France. Still another 
 delay occurred, however ; for, as the warehouse of Caen, a 
 former monopolist of the fur trade, had been looted by the 
 English traders, the French king granted him a monopoly of 
 the trade for a year in order to recoup himself. The operations 
 of the Company of One Hundred Associates did not, therefore, 
 begin until 1633.^ 
 
 Once actually in possession, it was not long before the direc- 
 tors of the company made their first seigniorial grant of lands. 
 This was the grant of the seigniory of Beauport, near Quebec, 
 to Robert Giffard, the deed bearing date of January 15, 
 1634. The grant comprised a tract of land lying along the 
 north shore of the St. Lawrence River just below Quebec, one 
 league in length by one and one-half leagues in depth, in " full 
 jurisdiction, property, and seigniory." ^ Just a month later 
 (February 15) the directors made to the Reverend Fathers 
 of the Society and Company of Jesus a grant in francJie aicnwne, 
 or mortmain, of a tract of land comprising about six hundred 
 arpents, situated at Three Rivers ; * and, from this time on, 
 grants were made with considerable frequency. 
 
 All together the Company of One Hundred Associates made 
 about sixty seigniorial grants,^ most of them, however, with 
 little regard to the ability or the intention of the grantees to 
 clear and develop their grants. Many were made to associates 
 and their friends in France, who never came out to the colony 
 at all ; in fact, it is doubtful if more than a score of them were 
 ever taken possession of by those to whom they were made. 
 
 1 Henry Kirke, The First English Conquest of Canada (1871). 
 
 2 Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, i. 168-178. 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 386. The depth of the Beauport seigniory was in 1653 
 increased to four leagues {Ibid. 388). 
 
 * Ibid. 70, 
 
 ^ The complete list may be found in the appendix to Christopher Dunkin's 
 Address at the Bar of (he legislative Assembly of Canada on behalf of certain Seign- 
 iors in Lower Canada (1853).
 
 26 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 The conditions imposed in the different title-deeds varied 
 greatly ; but in many cases the company provided that the 
 settlers whom the seignior should send to the colony should 
 " serve to the discharge of the company, in diminution of the 
 number of settlers which it was under obligation to send ; and 
 that to this end the seignior should deliver each year a list of 
 such to the officers of the company, that it might be certi- 
 fied." 1 It would thus seem as if the company made a number 
 of grants in the hope that the recipients would assist the 
 directors in procuring settlers for New France. 
 
 During the first fifteen years of the company's operations in 
 Canada comparative peace prevailed, and the profits from 
 the fur trade were large; but after 1647 the Iroquois became 
 more and more aggressive, and by their repeated incursions 
 into the company's sphere of influence proved a source both of 
 danger and of loss. Finally, in the course of 1648, they made 
 their way into the Huron country, and all but extirpated that 
 tribe, hitherto one of the stanchest allies of the French. One 
 of the best sources of the peltry supply was thus cut off,^ a fact 
 which, together with the possession by hostile Indians of the 
 chief fur-trade routes, served greatly to diminish the company's 
 trade and to reduce its profits. As little or nothing had been 
 accomplished in developing the agricultural resources of the 
 colony, with the dechne of the fur trade most of the settlers 
 suffered severely, and sent vigorous complaints to the home 
 authorities that the company was not fulfilling the conditions 
 imposed by the terms of its charter.^ Furthermore, the Jesuits, 
 who had come out to the colony in considerable numbers, had 
 become involved in a bitter controversy with the company's 
 officials over the question of the liquor trade with the Indians, 
 and both parties had hastened to lay their respective sides of 
 the case before the king. In this way the attention of the 
 young sovereign and his minister Colbert was drawn to the 
 
 1 For examples, see Titres des Seigneuries, 32, 58, 375. 
 
 2 Benjamin Suite, La Guerre des Iroquois, in Royal Society of Canada, Proceed- 
 ings, 1897, Mhnoires, sec. i. 65-92. 
 
 3 The situation had become so acute that in 1661 the colonists sent one of their 
 number, Pierre Boucher, to request royal intervention in person. See Kingsford, 
 History of Canada, i. 284.
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 27 
 
 state of affairs in the colony, with the result that a little investi- 
 gation convinced them that a radical change was urgently 
 needed ; and they determined to revoke the charter of the 
 associates. 
 
 Before the royal decision could be announced, however, the 
 directors of the company had resolved to make a voluntary sur- 
 render of their privileges, a step which they were the more ready 
 to take, as profits had fallen off almost entirely and it was felt 
 that, if the liquor trade should be prohibited, the colony would 
 have to be maintained at a loss. Accordingly, by a deed of sur- 
 render they formally gave up the colony " to be disposed of by 
 His Majesty according to his pleasure." ^ This deed of surren- 
 der, dated February 24, 1663, was duly accepted by the king in 
 a royal edict issued the following month. " Instead of finding," 
 says the king in this edict, " that this country is settled as it 
 ought to be after so long an occupation thereof by our subjects, 
 we have learned with regret not only that the number of its 
 inhabitants is very limited, but that even these are every day in 
 danger of annihilation by the Iroquois. It being necessary to 
 provide against this contingency, and considering that the com- 
 pany is nearly extinct by the voluntary retirement of most of its 
 old associates, and that the few remaining have not the means 
 of maintaining the country and of sending thereto troops and 
 settlers both to defend and to inhabit the same, we have resolved 
 to withdraw it from the hands of the said company . . . and 
 have declared and ordered, that all rights of justice, property, 
 and seigniory, rights to appoint to offices of governor and lieu- 
 tenant-general in the said country, to name officers to administer 
 sovereign justice, and all and every other rights granted by our 
 most honored predecessor and father by the edict of April 29, 
 1627, be and the same are hereby reunited to our crown, to be 
 hereafter exercised in our name by officers whom we shall 
 appoint in this behalf." ^ 
 
 By the terms of this edict the administration of the affairs of 
 the colony was once more vested in the crown. A few days 
 later the king showed his lack of sympathy with the policy pur- 
 
 ^ " Deliberation de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France," Edits et Ordonnances, 
 i. 30. 2 Ibid. 31-32.
 
 28 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 sued by the directors of the company in making grants of 
 seigniories to parties who had no intention of developing them, 
 by the issue of a decree revoking all concessions made by the 
 company and still remaining uncleared. " One of the principal 
 reasons," runs this decree, " as a result of which the said country 
 is not peopled as it should be and that so many dwellings have 
 been destroyed by the Iroquois, is that large tracts of land have 
 been granted to all the private individuals of the colony who 
 have lacked the means of clearing them and who have placed 
 their homes in the middle of their grants. The result has been 
 that they are scattered about at considerable distances from one 
 another, and are neither able to render assistance to one another 
 nor to be conveniently succored by the garrisons at Quebec and 
 other places in the event of an attack. Furthermore it appears 
 that in a large part of the country only small patches of land 
 lying near the dwellings of the grantees have been cleared ; the 
 rest is far beyond their power to handle." It is therefore 
 ordered that, during the space of six months from the date of 
 the promulgation of this decree, "all the individual inhabitants 
 of New France shall cause the lands contained in their grants 
 to be cleared ; otherwise and in default thereof, on the expira- 
 tion of that period, all such uncleared lands shall be distributed 
 anew in the name of His Majesty either to inhabitants of the 
 colony or to newcomers." Finally, the decree empowered M. de 
 Mezy, governor, the Bishop of Petraea,i and M. Robert, inten- 
 dant,2 to see to the execution of the royal directions, to redis- 
 tribute the escheated grants, and to sign the title-deeds of the 
 new concessions.^ For the time being, it seemed as if the king 
 intended to supervise the administration of colonial affairs with 
 the same interest in details which was beginning to characterize 
 his administration at home. 
 
 1 Fran^ois-Xavier de Laval had been appointed to the post of vicar-apostolic in 
 New France in 1659 ; and, as the colony had not yet been constituted a diocese, he 
 was for the time being made titular bishop of Petraea in Arabia. In 1674 he became 
 bishop of Quebec. See Gosselin, Vie de Laval (Quebec, 1890). 
 
 2 Louis Robert was appointed intendant of New France, probably in the spring of 
 1663 ; but, so far as can be ascertained, he never assumed the duties of his post. 
 See W. B. Munro, The Office of Intendani in New France, in American Historical 
 Review, October, 1906. 3 Edits et Ordonnances, i. y^.
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 29 
 
 The reestablishment of direct royal control over New France 
 made necessary the provision of a new political administration 
 for the colony. This was arranged for by the issue of an edict 
 which, after reciting the fact that the great distance separating 
 the colony from France interfered with the prompt and diligent 
 administration of affairs by the home authorities, provided for 
 the creation of a Sovereign Council {conseil soiiverain), to be 
 composed of the governor, the bishop, and five inhabitants of 
 the colony to be chosen jointly by these two officials.^ The new 
 council was empowered " to take cognizance of all causes, crimi- 
 nal and civil, and to judge supremely {soiiveramement) and as a 
 court of last resort." It was intrusted with the registration and 
 promulgation of royal edicts, — its procedure in this regard to 
 follow that observed by the Parliament of Paris, — and was 
 authorized, in general, to carry out and specifically apply the royal 
 instructions in regard to the administration of colonial affairs.^ 
 
 In order the better to inform himself concerning the situation 
 of affairs in New France, the king appointed the Sieur Louis 
 Gaudais as special commissioner, and sent him out to Quebec in 
 the summer of 1663. The instructions given to Gaudais were 
 very comprehensive. He was told to make a particular investi- 
 gation of the land-granting system, of the progress which the set- 
 tlers had made in clearing their holdings, and of the general 
 agricultural prospects of the colony. He was further instructed 
 that, " if those to whom grants had been made should begin 
 operations toward clearing them entirely, and should at the ex- 
 piration of the six months mentioned in the edict of March 21 
 have cleared a considerable part of them. His Majesty would be 
 willing, on their petition, to instruct the Sovereign Council to 
 allow them a further six months, at the end of which, however, 
 no further extension would be made for any reason whatever." ^ 
 
 Notwithstanding this offer, many of the grants remained un- 
 improved ; and on August 16 the governor and bishop presented 
 to the council an ordinance providing for the revocation of a 
 number of grants. Before decreeing the promulgation of this 
 
 ^ This edict, rather curiously, contains no mention of an intendant. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordontiances, i. 37. 
 
 * For Gaudais's instructions, May 7, 1663, see Ibid. iii. 23.
 
 30 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 ordinance, the council directed it to be " communicated to the 
 syndic of the inhabitants," ^ in order that, on receipt of his 
 answer, directions might be given as should " seem advisable." ^ 
 The syndic's reply being duly had, the council ordered that the 
 royal edict of March 21 should be "executed according to its 
 form and tenor until revoked by the further orders of the king." 
 All uncleared lands therefore reverted to the crown ; and in 
 keeping with this provision the council undertook to require 
 that any dues or payments which might formerly have been 
 payable to the seigniors should now be collected by the royal 
 officials. Thus, on November 8, it ordained that certain inhabit- 
 ants of the seigniory of Cote de Lauzon should pay sums due 
 from them for fishing rights, not to the seignior, but to the royal 
 greffier at Quebec.^ The action of the council left no room for 
 doubt that it was the intention of the king to compel all those 
 who obtained seigniorial grants in the colony to justify their 
 titles by active work in improving their holdings. 
 
 The new royal government had been little more than a year 
 in operation when the colony was once more handed over to the 
 care of a commercial company. This new organization, known 
 as the Company of the West Indies, was formed under the 
 auspices of Colbert, just as the Company of One Hundred 
 Associates had been organized under the distinguished patron- 
 age of Cardinal Richeheu. The Company of the West Indies 
 was modelled in general upon the lines of the flourishing Dutch 
 commercial companies of the time, and was designed by Colbert 
 to assist materially in the work of gaining for France a share in 
 the growing commerce which Europe was developing in both 
 the East and the West.* 
 
 ^ The syndic was a local official whose duty it was to note infractions of the laws 
 and to report such to the higher authorities. The office of syndic, although com- 
 monly regarded as having been established by the edict of April, 1663, was in exist- 
 ence at Quebec (see Journal des Ji-suites, 185), Montreal (see Faillon, Histoirede 
 la Colonic Fran^aise, ii. 547), and Three Rivers (see Suite, Chronique Trifiiivienne, 
 216) several years before that date. The post soon passed out of existence in the 
 colony. See Garneau, Histoire du Canada, i. 179. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 18-19. ^ Ibid. 21. 
 
 * Cf. Sargent, The Economic Policy of Colbert (London School of Economics, 
 Studies in Economics attd Political Science, No. 5), 80-81 ; also Pigeonneau, La 
 Politique Coloniale de Colbert, in Annales deVEcole Libre des Sciences Politiques, i^%6..
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 3 1 
 
 By an edict dated May, 1664,^ the new company was placed 
 in possession of " Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland, and the other 
 islands and continents from the north of Canada to Virginia and 
 Florida," together with such other portions of the New World 
 as might be secured by conquest or otherwise.^ It was also 
 invested with very wide powers and very extensive privileges, 
 including a monopoly of trade, the entire profits of mines, forests, 
 and fisheries, the power to appoint " such governors as may be 
 deemed requisite," to whom His Majesty would grant commis- 
 sions,^ and the right " to appoint judges and officers of justice 
 wherever need be and to displace and dismiss them whenever 
 found necessary,"* together with many other equally important 
 rights. The edict also provided : " The said company, as seign- 
 iors of the said lands and islands, shall enjoy the seigniorial rights 
 which are at present established therein upon the inhabitants 
 of the same, as such rights are now levied by the seigniors in 
 possession, unless the said company shall deem it proper to 
 commute such rights for the relief of the said inhabitants; "^ 
 and it granted authority " to sell or dispose of the said lands by 
 way of enfeoffment . . . upon payment of such cens et rentes, 
 and other seigniorial rights as may be deemed proper, and to 
 such persons as the company may see fit." ^ It provided, 
 however, that the Cotitume de Paris should be the law of the 
 colony, " without its being lawful to introduce any other cou- 
 ttcjuey'' The king reserved to himself in the grant "neither 
 rights nor duties except those of fealty and homage, which the 
 company shall be bound to render at each mutation of the 
 crown," together with the customary nominal tribute of thirty 
 marks.^ 
 
 Although by the terms of its grant the company had power 
 to name governors and other administrative officers, it does not 
 
 1 The exact date of the edict is not given in the document, which is printed in 
 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 40-48. 
 
 2 To the Company of the West Indies were also granted Louisiana, the French 
 West Indies, the French territories in South America, and the whole of the African 
 coast from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 8 Article xxvi. ■* Article xxxi. 
 
 5 Article xxii. ^ Article xxiii. 
 
 ^ Article xxxiii. * Article xx.
 
 32 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 appear to have exercised this right ; ^ at any rate, none of the 
 commissions of colonial oiBcials mention any nomination as 
 having been made to the king by the company. In truth, as a 
 recent writer has remarked, the political situation in Canada at 
 this moment was singular enough. " As a matter of law, the 
 Company of the West Indies possessed the property, the seign- 
 iory, and the government of the country; but as a matter of 
 fact the king exercised all administrative rights, recovering with 
 one hand what he granted with the other. At law, moreover, 
 the company possessed the power to establish tribunals and to 
 make them effective; but in fact the king invested the gov- 
 ernor, intendant, and the members of the Sovereign Council with 
 supreme powers. At law, furthermore, the power of granting 
 lands pertained to the company ; in reality it was the governor 
 or the intendant, officers of the king, who made the grants. 
 This strange duaHsm, which lasted from 1664 to 1674, is vex- 
 ingly disconcerting to any one who, without sufficient initiation, 
 undertakes the study of this epoch." ^ 
 
 It is true that the company proceeded promptly to send out an 
 agent to the colony in the person of M. le Barroys, enjoining him, 
 among other duties, to concede " to private individuals the lands 
 of the colony at such rents as may be deemed proper," and to 
 see that "the company is paid the seigniorial dues which are 
 now or may hereafter be payable by the inhabitants " ; ^ but 
 neither the company nor its agent-general seems to have made 
 any energetic movement in the direction of developing the agri- 
 cultural resources of the colony. Both entered heartily into the 
 
 1 Charlevoix {Hisiotre de la Nouvelle France, i. 379-380) says that, "as the new 
 company had not yet sufficient knowledge of the persons best fitted to fill the posi- 
 tions, the directors prayed the king to make the appointments until such time as 
 they were in a position to make use of the privilege," and that, in consequence, 
 " His Majesty was pleased to appoint M. de Mesy governor and M. Robert intendant 
 of New France " ; but this explanation seems scarcely probable in view of the fact 
 that Mesy's commission bears date May i, 1663 (^Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 21), and 
 that Robert is mentioned as holding the post of intendant in March, 1663 (^Ibid. i. 
 33), whereas the charter of the company was not granted till May, 1664. 
 
 2 Chapais, Jea7i Talon, 49. 
 
 3 Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 36-37. The commission of M. le Barroys is dated 
 April 8, 1665, and was enregistered at Quebec on September 23 following (^Juge- 
 ments et Deliberations du Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle- France, i. 364-366).
 
 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 33 
 
 work of exploiting the fur trade, but neither seemed to think 
 that either advantage or profit was to be had from encouraging 
 settlers to take up lands and devote their energies to the 
 cultivation of them. The apathy of the company in this direc- 
 tion was so marked that it speedily arrested the attention of 
 Jean Talon when he was appointed intendant of New France in 
 March, 1665. Before this vigorous official had been more than 
 a few months in the country, he penned to the minister a 
 plain-spoken warning that the company would never do much 
 toward the permanent upbuilding of the colony. " If His Maj- 
 esty wishes to make anything of Canada," wrote Talon, "he 
 will never succeed unless he withdraws it from the hands of the 
 company and grants a liberty of commerce to the inhabitants to 
 the exclusion of strangers. If, on the contrary. His Majesty 
 looks on the colony only as a seat of commerce suitable for the 
 fur trade . . . the profit which will result therefrom is not worth 
 his attention and deserves very little of yours . . . for the com- 
 pany alone will profit much to the impoverishment of the 
 country." ^ As subsequent developments amply proved, the 
 warning was a timely one ; but it went for the moment un- 
 heeded. 
 
 For some years previous to 1665 the incursions of the Iro- 
 quois had been scourging the population of the colony to such 
 desperation that, in response to repeated requests, the king, in 
 the spring of that year, sent out to Quebec a detachment of 
 regular troops, comprising several companies of the Carignan- 
 Salieres regiment.^ With these troops came M. Prouville de 
 Tracy, who, under the title of lieutenant-general of New France, 
 was to have charge of the military operations, and who was 
 also to note carefully the condition of civil affairs in the colony 
 and to report to the king his opinions on the subject.^ 
 
 On Tracy's arrival in the colony, his attention was called to 
 the apathy of the company's agent in fostering settlement; and 
 it was probably in anticipation of his unfavorable report to the 
 
 ^ Talon to Colbert, October 4, 1665, Correspondance Generale, ii. 248. 
 "^ For the previous history of this regiment, see Susane, Histoire de P Ancienne 
 hifanterie Fran(aise (8 vols., Paris, 1849-1853), v. 236 ff. Cf. also below, pp. 36, 70. 
 ^ See Tracy's commission, November 19, 1663, Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 27-31.
 
 34 EARLY SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 king on the subject that M. le Barroys hastened to lay before 
 him a proposal that " for the future all grants of land be made 
 by the intendant at such rates as may be deemed proper, such 
 grants to be made in the presence of the agent-general of the 
 company, and all titles to be granted in the name of the com- 
 pany." ^ The proposal was readily accepted by Tracy, Cour- 
 celle, and Talon. " Nothing," they wrote on the margin of the 
 document, " appears more in conformity with the wishes of His 
 Majesty; hence it seems very proper to grant the request con- 
 tained in this article." From this time on, therefore, seign- 
 iorial grants were made directly by the officers of the crown in 
 the colony. 2 
 
 1 " Requete de M. le Barroys I. Monseigneur de Tracy concernant les Droits de la 
 Compagnie," Edits et Ordonnances, i. 51-60, § xxvi. 
 
 2 In some few cases during the years 1673-1674, however, seigniorial title-deeds 
 were issued by officers of the company. See Titres des Seigneuries, 39, 40, 112.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 I 666-1 760. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1666 that the Company of the West 
 Indies relinquished its right of making land grants in the col- 
 ony, and cast the responsibility of attending to this incident of 
 colonization upon the royal representatives. Upon the inten- 
 dant particularly now fell the task of seeing that seigniorial 
 holdings were provided for those settlers who seemed to be 
 entitled to them. Talon appears to have had liberal views on 
 this point; for, in a statement of the projects which he had in 
 mind for the development of the colony, he declares in favor of 
 the granting of seigniories " to all private individuals who may 
 choose to incur the expense of and give attention to their de- 
 velopment." ^ In spite of this declaration, however, it appears 
 that up to the late autumn of 1668, when the intendant returned 
 to France for a two years' stay, he had made only two further 
 seigniorial grants, — that of the seigniory of St. Maurice to one 
 Maurice Poulin, Sieur de la Fontaine, on January 10, 1668, and 
 that of the seigniory of St. Michel to the Sieur de Tilly on 
 June 20 of the same year.^ 
 
 Shortly after the departure of Talon for France, Governor 
 Courcelle made an informal grant of a seigniory near Three 
 Rivers to the Sieur Jean Le Moyne, in order that he might 
 " work thereon immediately," promising that a formal title 
 should be conveyed to him later.^ This title was duly forth- 
 
 ^ " Projets de Reglemens qui semblent etre utiles en Canada, proposes a Mes- 
 sieurs de Tracy et de Courcelle par^M. Talon, January 24, 1667," Edits et Ordon- 
 nances, ii. 29-34. 
 
 ^ The titles of these two grants are not printed in Tiires des Seigneuries, but 
 mention is made of them in the title-deeds of subsequent grants. Cf. Ibid. 154. 
 
 * Titres des Seigneuries, 300 (January 3, 1669). This was the seigniory of Ste. 
 Marie pres Batiscan. The grantee, an ancestor of Sir James Macpherson Le 
 Moine, should not be confused with the Lemoynes of Longueuil. 
 
 35
 
 36 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 coming in 1672, after Talon had returned from France. 
 During the next few years many seigniorial grants were made, 
 for the most part to officers of the Carignan-SaHeres regiment, 
 who had decided to become permanent settlers in the colony.^ 
 At the urgent request of Talon, the king had agreed that this 
 regiment, which had finished its work of crushing the power of 
 the Mohawks, should be disbanded in New France, and that 
 lands should be given to the officers and men, many of whom 
 availed themselves of the very liberal inducements held out by 
 the authorities.^ 
 
 In 1672 the king again turned his attention to those seigniors 
 who had been slothful in the work of clearing and settling their 
 seigniories, and by a royal edict commanded the intendant to 
 prepare " a precise and accurate declaration as to the nature of 
 the lands granted to the leading inhabitants of the country, the 
 number of arpents contained in them, and the number of persons 
 and horses employed in the cultivation and clearing of the 
 grants." He further instructed the intendant that, on the basis 
 of this statement, one-half of all the lands granted prior to the 
 last ten years were to be reunited to the royal domain and re- 
 granted to persons who would undertake to clear and cultivate 
 them ; for it was his opinion, as stated in the preamble of the 
 edict, that the development of the colony was being seriously 
 retarded by the possession, in the hands of private individuals, 
 of vast tracts of land which they were not able to utilize profit- 
 ably, and the undeveloped condition of which was a source of 
 inconvenience to the other inhabitants of the colony .^ Accom- 
 panying this edict was a royal order instructing the intendant 
 that, in regranting the escheated lands, he insert in the title- 
 deeds a provision requiring the grantees to have the grants 
 entirely cleared and under cultivation within the space of four 
 years, on pain of having their titles revoked.* 
 
 While the statement asked for by the king was being prepared, 
 and pending further royal action upon it, the execution of that 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 301 (November 3, 1672). ^ See below, pp. 67-70. 
 3 " Arret du Conseil d'Etat du Roi pour retrancher la moitie des Concessions," 
 June 14, 1672, Edits et Ordonnances, i. 70-71. 
 
 * "Matidement et Ordre du Roi sur I'arret ci-dessus," June 14, 1672, Ibid. 71-72.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 37 
 
 part of the edict which provided for the forfeiture of one-half 
 the earHer grants was postponed. The issue of the edict had, 
 however, one important result ; for most of the seigniors, from 
 this time forward, provided in the title-deeds of all subgrants 
 made by them within their seigniories that, unless the recipients 
 of such grants should clear their allotments, the land should re- 
 vert to the seignior. 
 
 It was at this stage in the development of affairs that the 
 king, in December, 1674, summarily revoked the charter of the 
 Company of the West Indies and extended freedom of trade to 
 all his subjects in New France, expressly stipulating, however, 
 in the decree of revocation, that all land grants made in the 
 colony by the company or its agents should be deemed valid 
 and confirmed.^ Like its predecessor the Company of One 
 Hundred Associates, the Company of the West Indies had 
 proved a failure both as a colonizer and as a mere exploiter of 
 colonial trade. In the ten years during which it had controlled 
 the French trade of the western hemisphere it had proved a 
 hindrance rather than a help to colonial progress; and, as it 
 had itself lost a large sum of money, estimated at over three 
 and a half milHons of livres,^ its demission was now regarded 
 as a boon to all concerned. 
 
 Since 1666 grants of seigniories had been made by the inten- 
 dant, except on a few occasions when they were made by the 
 governor ; and even in these cases they were later ratified by 
 the intendant. In 1676, however, a royal order directed that 
 for the future all land grants in the colony should be made by 
 the governor and intendant jointly {conjointement\ provided 
 always that such action should invariably be submitted to the 
 king for his approval, and that, if this approval were not forth- 
 coming within the space of a year, the grant should be declared 
 null and void. The officials were instructed to take care that 
 all seigniorial grants were contiguous.^ 
 
 Meanwhile His Majesty had examined the statement drawn 
 up at his request by Talon in 1672, and had found, from an 
 
 ^ "Edit du Roi portant Revocation de laCompagnie des Indes-Occidentales," etc.. 
 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 74 ff. 
 
 ^ R. S. Weir, Adminisiralion 0/ the Old Regime in Canada (1897), 4^* 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 89.
 
 38 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 examination of it, that the progress made by the seigniors in 
 getting their seigniories cleared and settled was very far from 
 satisfactory. At the same time he probably felt that to declare 
 the forfeiture of all, or of any very considerable part, of the un- 
 cleared and unsettled lands would be a hardship to many seign- 
 iors who had received grants of too great extent, but who had 
 nevertheless accomplished a great deal in the face of difficulties. 
 After some delay he decided, therefore, that a gradual retrench- 
 ment of uncleared grants should be made year by year, — a 
 system by which those seigniors who were the least active would 
 be the chief sufferers, — and accordingly issued the following 
 order: "Beginning with the year 1680, there shall be taken 
 away from the holder every year a twentieth part of every land 
 grant which shall be found to be uncleared, to be distributed 
 among His Majesty's subjects inhabiting the country or to those 
 who will go thither to reside." ^ 
 
 This royal order was duly received at Quebec, and enregis- 
 tered on the last day of October, 1679, but apparently no steps 
 were taken to carry it into effect; certainly no systematic 
 retrenchment of one-twentieth of the uncleared lands of seign- 
 iories was made. Shortly after the receipt of the order the 
 intendant, Duchesneau, despatched a lengthy communication to 
 the minister, in the course of which he discussed the existing 
 system of granting lands and made a number of proposals for 
 the future,^ — a device, it may be, for deferring the enforcement 
 of the royal order. As the members of the council were them- 
 selves seigniors, and as some of them had not been any too 
 energetic in developing their grants, it is very probable that 
 there was some understanding between them and the intendant 
 to delay the execution of the unwelcome order as long as pos- 
 sible. At any rate, it is true that on more than one occasion 
 the explicit orders of the king were left unenforced in the colony 
 when their execution would have been beneficial to all but the 
 seigniors.^ 
 
 1 " Retranchement des Concessions de trop grande Etendue, et Ordre d'en dis- 
 poser," May 9, 1679, Edits et Ordonnances, i. 233. 
 
 2 Duchesneau to Minister, October i, 1679, Correspondance Generale, v. 30-36. 
 
 3 See below, p. 106.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 39 
 
 In spite of the royal opinion, as expressed in the order, 
 that too many seigniorial grants had been made and that the 
 grants were too generous in extent, there seems to have been 
 no marked decrease in the number of seigniories granted year 
 by year from this time on, and no diminution in the area of the 
 grants made to individuals. The title-deeds were drawn up and 
 signed by the governor and intendant jointly, and were then 
 sent to the king for his ratification, which was extended freely, 
 a number of titles usually being ratified in a single royal 
 decree.^ Occasionally the king, in making the ratification, took 
 occasion to insert some new condition, particularly a clause 
 providing that the grants should be cleared within a certain 
 time; but for the most part he ratified the title-deeds just as 
 they were. 
 
 It was understood that the seigniors, in making subgrants, 
 should give the habitants written titles,^ stating clearly the 
 boundaries of the grants and the conditions incumbent upon the 
 grantees ; but this practice was apparently very often omitted, fo5' 
 the habitants frequently took lands in seigniories without firsi 
 receiving formal written deeds. In 1707 the intendant, Raudot, 
 called the attention of the minister to abuses which had arisen 
 in this connection. "Many habitants," he asserts, "have 
 worked to a considerable extent on their lands merely on the 
 word of the seigniors ; others on simple tickets which do not 
 express precisely the terms upon which the grants are made. 
 Hence a great abuse has arisen, which is that the habitants who 
 have worked without safe titles have been subjected to very 
 heavy rents and dues, the seigniors refusing to grant them deeds 
 except on these conditions, which they are obliged to accept 
 because otherwise they would lose their labor. As a conse- 
 quence of this, the dues are different in almost every seigniory: 
 some pay in one way and some in another, according to the dif- 
 ferent characters of the seigniors by whom the grants are made." 
 
 1 See Edits et Ordonnances, i. 262. 
 
 "^ The dependents of the seigniors in New France were not, as at home, known 
 as " censitaires " ; they were in their own language "habitants," a term which 
 they seem to have preferred because it did not necessarily involve the idea of 
 dependence.
 
 40 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 He proposes that, in order to remedy this condition of affairs, 
 the king shall " give a declaration reforming, and even regulat- 
 ing for the future, all the rights and dues which the seigniors 
 have given and shall in future give to themselves," and, further, 
 that he shall validate all titles of lands which have been in the 
 possession of holders for five years and over. " It is only thus," 
 he declares, " that you can establish peace and quietness in this 
 country which, without this precaution, will always be unhappy 
 and unable to increase its inhabitants ; for men cannot attend 
 to the cultivation of their lands when they are daily compelled 
 to leave them in order to defend themselves against unjust law- 
 suits." Raudot points out that the habitants are entirely ignorant 
 of their rights, and that " they are afraid of the mildest threats 
 on this subject from others as ignorant as themselves." The 
 worthy intendant deplores the spirit of " cunning and chicane " 
 which had begun to show itself in the colony,^ and which 
 was moving the seigniors to take advantage of legal technicali- 
 ties in their relations with the habitants. " The notaries, bailiffs, 
 and even judges having been all of them ignorant persons . . .," 
 he continues, " there is no property the possessor of which 
 might not be troubled, no partition that might not be unsettled, 
 no widow who might not be attacked as having possessed in 
 common with her husband, and no guardians against whom a 
 suit might not be brought for the accounts which they have 
 rendered of their guardianship. It is not that all may not have 
 often acted in good faith, but ignorance and the want of rules 
 have produced these disorders. If those who might avail them- 
 selves of this spirit were allowed to bring lawsuits, there would 
 soon be more suits in this country than there are persons." ^ 
 
 The minister gave due consideration to the representations of 
 the intendant, and on June 13, 1708, replied that he had "been 
 very much pained to hear of the irregularity " with which every- 
 
 1 " L'esprit d'affaires qui a toujours, comme vous savez, beaucoup plus de subtilite 
 et de chicane, qu'il n'a de verite et de droiture, a commenced s'introduire ici depuis 
 quelque temps et augmente tous les jours par ses deux mauvais endroits. Si Ton 
 pouvait les retrancher, cet esprit pourrait etre bon pour I'avenir ; quoique la sim- 
 plicite dans laquelle on y vivait autrefois ffit encore meilleure." 
 
 2 Raudot to Pontchartrain, November lo, 1707, Correspondance GeneraU, xxvi. 
 9-10.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 4 1 
 
 thing had been done hitherto, but expressed the opinion that a 
 royal declaration covering the matter and providing the remedies 
 suggested by Raudot could not be made ready till the following 
 year.^ In the meantime he desired the intendant to make a 
 more thorough investigation of the whole matter, and to send 
 a memorandum of the exact provisions which he might think it 
 well to have incorporated in the decree. About a month later, 
 Pontchartrain communicated with Messrs. Deshaguais and 
 Daguesseau, two eminent lawyers of Paris, enclosing to them 
 Raudot's despatch and requesting them to draft for the royal 
 signature a decree such as the intendant desired.^ 
 
 The intendant, meanwhile, did as he was bidden. He made 
 further inquiries ; and in the following October, when the ships 
 sailed for France, he sent the minister another lengthy despatch, 
 in which the condition of affairs was explained minutely. " Some 
 of the habitants," he writes, " never had any title-deeds and have 
 had nothing to show in support of their claims to their holding ; " 
 they had taken the lands on the oral assignment of the seign- 
 iors (yS2ir la parole des seigneurs). Others had brief memoranda 
 {les simples billets) which proved the allotment of lands, but 
 gave no indication whatever as to the terms upon which the 
 grants had been made. Many had lost even these memoranda, 
 and not a few who had received formal title-deeds had either 
 lost or mislaid them. To make matters worse, many of the 
 habitants had been forced to abandon their lands temporarily in 
 consequence of the Iroquois wars, and hence could not show 
 even continuous possession.^ Raudot made a list of sugges- 
 tions which, had they been adopted, would have most ma- 
 terially altered the whole structure of Canadian feudaUsm ; 
 but when his despatch reached Paris, it was found that Messrs. 
 
 1 As the last ships that would go to Quebec in 1 708 were to leave France before 
 the middle of July, it seemed impossible to prepare the decree in time. 
 
 "^ Pontchartrain to Deshaguais and Daguesseau, July 10, 1708. These letters are 
 printed in Corresp07iJence behveeti the French Government and the Governors and 
 Intendafits of Canada relative to the Seigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1853), lO-ll. 
 The latter of these two lawyers was probably Henri-Frangois d'Aguesseau, or 
 Daguesseau, who afterward became chancellor of France (cf. BouUee, Histoire de 
 la Vie et des Ouvrages du Chancelier d^Aguesseau, Paris, 1835). 
 
 3 Raudot to Pontchartrain, October 18, 1708, Correspondance Generale, xxviii. 
 175-187.
 
 42 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 Deshaguais and Daguesseau had not yet drawn up the decree 
 based upon the desires of the intendant as expressed in his first 
 communication. In fact it was not until 171 7 that the draft 
 was ready for the signatures of the king and the ministers.^ 
 These signatures, however, the decree appears never to have re- 
 ceived. It is not unhkely, in view of the fact that Raudot's 
 plan proposed to sweep away several of the most important 
 seigniorial rights, including the right of exacting corvee, that its 
 recommendations seemed too radical to Louis XIV. At all 
 events, they were set aside ; and, without waiting for the draft 
 decree, the king proceeded to correct the evils in his own time 
 and way. 
 
 After a careful consideration of the measures necessary. His 
 Majesty issued, on July 8, 171 1, two of the most important 
 enactments in the whole history of the colonial land-tenure sys- 
 tem, the Arrets of Marly.^ The first of these decrees relates to 
 the seigniors, and more especially to the obligation of seigniors 
 to subgrant their lands. The crux of the whole difficulty ap- 
 peared to be, in the opinion of the king, that the seigniors had 
 not been forced to have their seigniories settled within a reason- 
 able time. His Majesty seems to have believed that, if every 
 seignior were compelled to get settlers for his lands, he would 
 not be likely to resort to legal technicalities in order to impose 
 additional burdens on his habitants, but rather would vie with 
 the other seigniors in offering favorable terms to settlers. The 
 first of the two arrets, therefore, provided in general that, at the 
 expiration of a year, all seigniors who should have shown con- 
 spicuous failure in developing and settling their seigniories 
 should be deprived of their grants. Furthermore, it declared 
 that the practice of exacting anything more than the customary 
 dues and services from those who apphed for lands within the 
 seigniories was "entirely contrary to His Majesty's intentions." 
 To prevent the continuance of the practice, it decreed : " All 
 seigniors in the country of New France shall grant to the set- 
 
 ^ For a copy of this decree, see Correspondence between the French Government 
 and the Governors and Intendants of Canada relative to the Seigniorial Tenure, 
 17-18. 
 
 - Edits et Ordontiances, i. 324-326. These arrets took the name of the place at 
 which the royal signature was appended.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 43 
 
 tiers whatever lots of land the latter may demand of them, at a 
 ground rent (^ titre de redevance\ without exacting from them 
 any bonus as the price of such grants ; otherwise, and in the 
 event of their refusing to do so, the said settlers are permitted to 
 make formal demand on the seigniors for such lands, and, in the 
 case of a further refusal on the part of the seignior, they shall 
 have power to make application to the governor and intendant of 
 the said country, whom His Majesty hereby empowers and or- 
 ders to make the grants applied for in the said seigniories on 
 the same terms as those imposed upon the other inhabitants in 
 the said seigniories. In such cases the seigniorial dues shall be 
 paid by the new habitants into the hands of the receiver of the 
 royal domain at Quebec, and the seigniors shall have no right to 
 claim anything whatever from them." 
 
 The second arret relates to the habitants. After reciting the 
 usual tale of royal disappointment at the fact that many sub- 
 grants within the seigniories "remained uncultivated and even 
 unoccupied," a condition which "is decidedly detrimental both 
 to the development of the colony and to the interest of the other 
 habitants of the seigniories," this arret ordained that all those 
 who did not cultivate and inhabit (tejiirfeu etlieti) their holdings 
 within the space of one year should, on the certificate of the 
 cure and the captain of the militia ^ to this effect, forfeit their 
 lands to the seigniorial domain ; such forfeiture to be made 
 effective by order of the governor and intendant. 
 
 These two arrets, as will be seen later, had very important 
 effects. They formed alike a means of protection for the habit- 
 ants against extortion on the part of the seignior, and a guar- 
 antee to the seignior against the acquisition of his lands for 
 speculative purposes. At one stroke they took away any pro- 
 prietary right which the seignior might have assumed to possess 
 in his ungranted lands, and placed him, as regards them, 
 in the position of a mere trustee for the crown.^ From 171 1 
 
 ^ The capitabie de la milice was a local military and executive officer appointed 
 in each parish by the colonial authorities. His duties were to prepare and keep the 
 muster-roll of the parish, to promulgate and see to the enforcement of decrees issued 
 by the intendant or the council, and, generally, to perform such administrative duties 
 as might tee from time to time laid upon him by the authorities at Quebec. 
 
 2 Cf. Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Generale du Droit Civil Canadien, 244.
 
 44 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 onward, if a habitant paid a bonus to the seignior for a grant of 
 uncleared lands, or paid higher dues than were customary in the 
 neighborhood, it was not because the crown intended that he 
 should do so. 
 
 The machinery provided for the enforcement of the arrets of 
 171 1 was in some degree effective. Very frequently settlers 
 sought and received grants from the officials after seigniors had 
 refused them lands on reasonable terms ; but in many other 
 cases incoming settlers seem to have been unaware of the real 
 situation and to have paid what seigniors unreasonably asked, 
 being mulcted as the price of their ignorance.^ The seigniors, 
 moreover, used the new provisions to get back a good deal of 
 land which had been left uncleared by the grantees. In 1731 
 the governor and intendant reported that they had decreed the 
 reannexation to various seigniorial domains of over two hundred 
 grants, "by reason of the grantees having failed to reside 
 thereon." ^ As regards the forfeiture of seigniories which re- 
 mained uncleared, however, the arrets seem to have accomplished 
 little or nothing.^ 
 
 During the six years following the issue of the Arrets of 
 Marly only five grants of seigniories were made,* and during 
 
 1 See below, p. 48. 
 
 2 Beauharnois and Hocquart to Maurepas, October 3, 1731, Correspondance 
 Generale, liv. 39. 
 
 ^ I have found only one case in which a seignior had his title revoked and his- 
 lands reunited to the domain of the crown as a result of the issue of these arrets. 
 On March i, 1714, the governor and intendant pronounced the forfeiture of the 
 seigniory of Mille Isles, granted to the Sieur Dugue on September 24, 1683. So far 
 as I am aware, the ordinance of forfeiture has not been printed; but it is mentioned 
 in the regrant of this seigniory to Messieurs de Langloiserie and Petit, a few days 
 after it was taken from its former holder (March 5, 1714, Titres des Seigneuries, 59).. 
 From this time to 1737 there seems to be no instance of the forfeiture of any 
 seigniory under the provisions of the Arrets of Marly. There are, however, a num- 
 ber of intendant's ordinances, authorizing seigniors to resume possession of lands 
 granted en arriere fief to persons who had failed to comply with the conditions 
 imposed in their grants, more particularly with regard to residence (see Edits et 
 Ordonnances, ii. 585-589). 
 
 * These were as follows : Riviere Yamaska to Ramezay, and Beloeil to Longue- 
 uil, March 24, 1713 (^Titres des 5«^«tf?<r?,?5, 454-455); Beaumont to Charles Couil- 
 lard de Beaumont, April 10, 1713 {Ibid. 64); Mille Isles to Gaspard Piot, dit 
 Langloiserie, and Sieur Petit, March 5, 1714 {Ibid. 59); and Lac des Deux-Mont- 
 agnes to Messieurs "Les Ecclesiastiques du Seminaire de St. Sulpice, etablis a Mont-
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 45 
 
 the ten next ensuing years (1717-1727) there were none at 
 all. The reason for this entire absence of seigniorial grants 
 during the latter period may perhaps be found in a clause 
 of a despatch from the minister to the governor and intendant 
 (Vaudreuil and Begon), dated May 23, 17 19, in which the 
 minister, referring to the petition of one " Sieur Desjordy 
 Moreau, captain in His Majesty's forces," for the grant of a 
 seigniory, declares : " This favor would be very willingly granted 
 but for the fact that, since it has become apparent that the great 
 number of seigniories is proving prejudicial to the settlement 
 of Canada, it has been for some years the policy of the crown 
 not to grant any more of them, which policy and decision His 
 Majesty communicated to the Sieur Vaudreuil in his despatch 
 of June 15, 1716,1 . . . and in consequence of which he does 
 not wish to make any grants except en roUire."'^ 
 
 Just what moved the minister to this determination in 17 16 
 there is no way of definitel}'' ascertaining, for the despatch in 
 which he first communicated his decision to the colonial au- 
 thorities is not at hand. It is not unlikely, however, that the 
 report of the engineer Gedeon de Catalogne,^ which was trans- 
 mitted by the intendant to the French authorities in the autumn 
 of 1 71 2, may have had an influence in determining the change 
 of policy. This report gave an exhaustive and very compre- 
 hensive description of colonial resources and conditions, dealing 
 particularly with the progress made upon the various seigniories.* 
 
 real," October 17, 171 7 (^Ibid. 337). Of these five, the first does not appear to have 
 been taken possession of ; the second and third were augmentations of former 
 grants; the fourth was a regrant of a forfeited seigniory (see above, p. 44, note 3); 
 and the last was made to a religious corporation in order to provide a site for an 
 Indian mission. 
 
 ^ I have been unable to find this despatch ; it is not in the Correspondance 
 Gc tier ale. 
 
 2 Minister to Vaudreuil and Begon, May 23, 1719, Correspondance Ghierale, xl. 
 245. See also Ibid. xli. 11-16. 
 
 3 For a sketch of the life of Catalogne, see Tanguay, Etude sur une Famille Cana- 
 dienne : Famille de Catalogne, in Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings, i>'-84, 
 Memoires, sec. i. 7 ff. 
 
 * " Memoire sur les Plans des Seigneuries et Habitations de Quebec, les Trois- 
 Kivieres, et de Montreal, par M. de Catalogne, Ingenieur," November 9, I7I2, 
 Correspondance Generate, xxxiii. 278 ff. A small portion of this report is printed 
 in the appendix to Parkman's Old Regime in Canada.
 
 46 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 As Catalogne visited most of the important seigniories in the 
 colony, his report contains a great deal of interesting infor- 
 mation regarding the topography of the grants, the extent to 
 which the seigniories had been developed, the nature of the 
 crops raised, the relations of the seigniors to their habitants, — in 
 short, a mass of interesting data concerning the structure and 
 incidents of Canadian feudalism in the earlier years of the eigh- 
 teenth century which can be had nowhere else. He describes 
 ninety-one seigniories in all, of which the majority belonged 
 to the religious orders (more particularly to the Jesuits), to 
 members of the council, to judges, and to other officials. A 
 score or more belonged to discharged officers of the regular 
 army, and a number to the widows and sons of officers ; 
 of the remainder, ten belonged to merchants and traders, two 
 to sailors, and only a dozen to those who gave their occupation 
 as laborers. Catalogne remarked that in most of the seign- 
 iories a considerable portion of the land was still uncleared, 
 and that the habitants were usually unable to cultivate a quarter 
 of what they held. 
 
 Catalogne complained that the people were compelled by the 
 church to leave their work for the too numerous fetes, a circum- 
 stance which was very detrimental to the proper cultivation of 
 the soil. On account of these fetes, he declared, not more 
 than ninety working days were left to the habitants in the 
 whole busy season between the beginning of May and the end 
 of September. This, he thought, was one of the reasons why so 
 many of them abandoned their lands and went off to the forest, 
 preferring to sacrifice a whole harvest for the chance of making 
 thirty or forty ictis} Catalogne, it may be remarked, was not 
 the only one to complain of this practice ; successive governors 
 and intendants adverted to the great difficulty experienced in 
 persuading the habitants to stay on their farms. The fascina- 
 tion of forest life appealed especially to the young men, 
 who went off to the western wilderness by the score almost 
 every year. 
 
 According to Catalogne's report, the methods of agriculture 
 
 1 The ecu of Louis XIV may be reckoned at slightly more than five francs, or 
 somewhat more than a dollar in American currency.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 47 
 
 in the colony were both slovenly and crude. " If the land were 
 not better cultivated in France than here," he wrote, " three- 
 quarters of the people would starve." He found, moreover, 
 that the habitants were uneconomical and improvident, taking 
 little thought for the morrow ; even the very poorest of them, 
 he said, kept one or more horses, which did little but eat their 
 heads off for seven or eight months of the year. In his opinion 
 the people would do much better to raise beef cattle, which 
 could be made a source of profit. As for the seigniors, they 
 appeared to him to be lacking in energy as well as in capital. 
 Many of them seemed poorer than their dependents, and, being 
 often men of low extraction, were frequently unable to command 
 the respect of their habitants. 
 
 Taken all in all, the report of M. de Catalogne was not such 
 as to convince the king or the minister that the seigniorial 
 system was making very encouraging headway in the colony. 
 As the old king was, however, about to close his long reign, the 
 recommendations contained in the report appear not to have 
 been acted upon at that time ; but two years later, when the 
 death of Louis XIV, in 171 5, resulted in the establishment of a 
 regency, the decision to cease making further seigniorial grants, 
 at least for the time being, seems to have been one of the early 
 acts of the new government. 
 
 After the lapse of a decade, grants of seigniories began to be 
 made once more, the first one to the Ursulines of Three Rivers 
 on April 18, 1727.^ This seems to have been an isolated 
 grant made for a special reason,^ and it does not appear that 
 any more were made until 1731; but from that time on they 
 became quite numerous. With the resumption of the grants, 
 however, came a renewal of complaints regarding the existence 
 of seigniorial abuses. Apparently the provisions of the Arrets of 
 Marly were being evaded by many of the seigniors. If one 
 may trust a report made to the minister by Messrs. Beauhar- 
 
 ^ Dunkin, Address at the Bar of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, Appendix, 
 No. 376. I have not been able to find a copy of this title-deed; the original was 
 destroyed by fire at Three Rivers in 1806. 
 
 ^ The Ursulines of Three Rivers had acquired by purchase and otherwise several 
 small parcels of land. The grant of 1727 consolidated these into a single fief, adding 
 thereto a considerable tract from the ungranted domain.
 
 48 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 nois and Hocqiiart in 1730, the seigniors found several wa5^s of 
 circumventing the provisions of the first of the two arrets of 
 171 1, which prohibited them from exacting any entrance fee 
 from those taking up uncleared lands within the seigniories, 
 and ordered them to make grants, at the usual terms, to all 
 settlers who applied for them. In this report, complaint is 
 made that some seigniors " reserve considerable domains within 
 their seigniories, and, under the pretext that these lands form 
 part of their own demesne, have refused to grant any part 
 of this reservation, claiming that they have a right to hold 
 it for sale." It is also shown that those who hold lands en 
 arrih'e Jief contmwe. to exact 2l prix d'ejitree, on the ground that 
 the arret applies only to the dominant seigniors and not to 
 sub-seigniors ; that many seigniors who *' appeared to concede 
 their lands gratis have taken means to secure payment for 
 such lands (without mentioning the fact on the face of the 
 deed), by obtaining separate obligations from the grantees for 
 sums pretended to be due the seigniors for other considerations;" 
 and, again, that some seigniors exact an entry fee under color of 
 some inconsiderable clearingwithoutcultivation, or under pretence 
 that natural prairie land is to be found upon the grant. The 
 governor and intendant refer to the fact that most of the 
 habitants are ignorant of the provisions of the first arret of 171 1 ; 
 and they call attention to the existence of considerable land 
 speculation, " which is injurious to the colony and tends to 
 foster indolence among the habitants without furthering the 
 settlement or cultivation of the lands." Naturally enough, as 
 they point out, " the seigniors are doing nothing to discourage 
 this speculation, for a mutation fine {lods et ventes) accrues to 
 them whenever the lands change hands ; in most cases, therefore, 
 they do not seek to reunite unoccupied lands to their domain 
 (as they have been empowered to do by the second arret of 
 171 1 ), preferring to have such lands made the basis of specula- 
 tive sales as often as possible." Accordingly the governor and 
 intendant pray the minister to secure the issue of another decree 
 prohibiting the sale of wild lands on any pretext whatever.^ 
 
 1 Beauharnois and Hocquart to Maurepas, October lo, 1730, Correspondance 
 Generale, liv. 106 ff.
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 49 
 
 In due time the minister, Maurepas, replied that he had taken 
 the matter before the king, who had " learned with pain of the 
 inexecution of the arrets of 171 1." ^ The nonchalant manner in 
 which both Louis XIV and his successor heard again and again 
 that their decrees were either unexecuted or evaded in New 
 France is worthy of remark. Instead of recalling those officials 
 who had been responsible for the outcome, they merely ordered 
 that the decree in question be republished, or they issued a new de- 
 cree along the old lines. Consequently, the minister now informed 
 the colonial officials that His Majesty stood prepared either to 
 order the republication of the Arrets of Marly, or to issue a 
 new and more stringent decree, as the governor and intendant 
 might think best. The latter replied that the republication 
 would probably effect the desired end for the time being, but 
 that a census {terrier) of the colony was then being taken, an 
 examination of which, when completed, would best indicate 
 what further action would be necessary. They complained, 
 however, that the religious orders were delaying the completion 
 of this enumeration through their failure to respond to requests 
 made to them for information regarding the extensive territo- 
 ries which they held. In the following year a royal decree 
 issued from Versailles reiterated the provisions of the Arrets 
 of Marly, and ordered that these be forthwith " enforced accord- 
 ing to their form and tenor." ^ 
 
 As the census was not completed for two years after the issue 
 of this decree, the colonial officials meantime delayed proceeding 
 to the forfeiture of uncleared seigniories. Even after the census 
 had been fully taken in 1734,^ they continued to put off action; 
 and it was not until the spring of 1741 that the governor and in- 
 
 ^ Maurepas to Beauharnois and Hocquart, April 24, 1731. This document is 
 calendared in the Report on Canadian Archives for 1904, p. 143. It has not yet 
 been transcribed for the Correspondance Generale. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 531 (March 15, 1732). 
 
 ^ This census was, it is believed, the most exact that had been taken up to this 
 time. The total population of the colony is given as 37,716. The amount of cleared 
 lands is placed at 180,868 arpents, of which 163,111 were under cultivation. Since 
 1721, when the last previous census had been taken, the area of cleared lands had 
 more than doubled. A manuscript copy of the census is in the archives of the 
 Quebec Historical Society ; a summary of it is printed in Censuses of Canada, 
 1665-1871, p. 57.
 
 50 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 
 
 tendant finally bestirred themselves to the work of enforcing the 
 royal orders in the case of tardy seigniors. On May lo of that 
 year they issued a joint judgment forfeiting to the crown do- 
 main some twenty seigniories, the owners of which were deemed 
 not to have showed sufficient energy in clearing and settling their 
 lands.^ The stroke was a drastic one, for no compensation what- 
 ever was given to the seigniors ; but it ought to be mentioned that 
 some of the forfeited lands were later restored to their former 
 owners by grants de novo? However, the issue of the ordi- 
 nance had a very wholesome effect on the remaining seigniors 
 of the colony, who from this time forward seem to have given 
 more attention to the development of their seigniories. 
 
 The procedure to be followed by the governor and intendant 
 in making grants of seigniories and in arranging for their for- 
 feiture had never been clearly defined until the summer of 1743, 
 when it was set forth in detail by a royal arret. According to 
 the terms of this arret, either the governor or the intendant might 
 make grants in the absence of the other from the colony. When 
 the two officials differed as to the advisability of granting a seign- 
 iory to an applicant, they were to leave the matter in abeyance un- 
 til the king's wishes could be known; but when they differed as 
 to the advisability of decreeing the forfeiture of a seigniory, they 
 were to call in the oldest available member of the Superior 
 Council. Any seignior who felt that his seigniory had been 
 wrongfully taken from him was, by the terms of the arret, to 
 have the right of appeal to the king.^ 
 
 During the remaining seventeen years of the French regime in 
 Canada (1743- 1760) many grants were made; but none of them 
 contained any peculiar features, and the system itself seems 
 to have developed nothing that was new. This was a period 
 of military storm and stress in New France, and all the en- 
 ergies of the population were directed toward the attain- 
 ment of success in the great struggle. Seigniories were often 
 deserted, for almost the whole adult male population was 
 
 1 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 555-561. 
 
 2 For example, the Sieur Foucault received back his forfeited seigniory on May i, 
 1743 {Titres des Seigneuries, 204). 
 
 3 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 572—574. 
 
 i
 
 LATER SEIGNIORIAL GRANTS. 5 1 
 
 concentrated at Quebec, Montreal, and the other strategic points. 
 Whenever possible, the habitants were allowed to go back to 
 their farms for short periods during seed-time and harvest; but 
 the enforced absence of the cultivators of the land was severely 
 felt, and when the colony passed into British hands the whole 
 agricultural area showed very plainly the disastrous results of 
 neglect.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 In general it was the policy of the crown to grant out lands 
 in the colony en seigneiirie only, and of those who received 
 grants en seigneiirie to subgrant their lands to be held en 
 censive. It will be found, however, that, although this was the 
 ordinary procedure, there were some deviations from it; for, 
 strictly speaking, there were no less than six distinct forms of 
 tenure in existence, although four of them were clearly excep- 
 tional. These six forms may be enumerated as follows: (i) en 
 franc aleii noble, (2) en franc alen roturier, (3) en franche aumone, 
 or frankalmoign, (4) en fief or en seigneiir'ie, (5) en arrih'e 
 fief, (6) en censive, or eti roture. While it is true that there 
 were but very few examples of each of the first three forms 
 of tenure, and while the fifth was not nearly so general as the 
 fourth and the sixth, some consideration must be given to even 
 the exceptional forms. 
 
 I. Grants en franc aleu noble were not really feudal, but 
 rather allodial, grants ; they were held without other condition 
 than that the grantee should render fealty and homage.^ When 
 made to individuals, they conferred upon the holders rank in the 
 noblesse ; but no grants to private individuals were ever made 
 in the colony under this tenure. In fact, only two grants en 
 franc alen noble were made throughout the French regime, and 
 both to the Jesuit order, — one of a small strip of land at 
 Three Rivers in 1634,2 the other of Charlesbourg, near Quebec, 
 in 1637.2 The reason given for making the grants in this form 
 rather than en seignenrie was that, since the titles of all lands 
 
 1 Henrion de Pansey, Dissertations Feodales, i. II-27. 
 
 2 This tract of about six hundred arpents was known as Pachiriny, or Pachirine. 
 See Titres des Seigneuries, 70 ; also below, p. 180. 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 346—347. 
 
 52
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 53 
 
 granted to the Jesuits vested in the general of the order, the 
 quint, or mutation fine, would, in the case of lands held en fief , 
 become due and payable each time a change in the headship of 
 the order was made, whereas by the tenure en franc aleti noble 
 this payment was avoided.^ The Jesuits did not, however, find 
 it advisable to adhere to this policy, for in the case of other 
 grants they requested and received the allotments as seigniories. 
 In 1678, however, they secured the issue of a royal edict where- 
 by all their lands were amortised and freed from the usual 
 obligations to the crown.^ 
 
 2. The grant of a tract of land to be held en franc aleii 
 rotiirier did not bring to the grantee any rank in the nobility ; 
 but in other respects it corresponded to a grant en franc aleu 
 noble. It was, in fact, roughly analogous to a grant in free and 
 common socage. Lands held en franc aleti rotu7-ier\vQ.rQ subject 
 to no dues or payments ; indeed, they were not feudal grants at 
 all.^ Only a few of them were made, and for each one there was 
 usually some good reason, which was not infrequently stated in 
 the preamble of the title-deed. Sometimes, for example, a 
 seignior received en franc aleu rotiirier a grant of land which 
 happened to lie where it was naturally exposed to Indian 
 attacks, and for which, therefore, it would be difificult to obtain 
 settlers ; or, as in one case, he received the grant of an island 
 lying off his seigniory, merely in order that he might erect upon 
 it any small works which he might deem essential to the proper 
 defence of his seigniory against Indian raids. On such hold- 
 ings it seemed only fair that no quint should be made payable. 
 
 3. Grants en franche aumone, or frankalmoign, were made in 
 considerable number, invariably to rehgious, educational, or 
 charitable orders or institutions. The sole obligation imposed 
 upon the holders of such grants, in addition to that of rendering 
 
 ^ Robert Abraham, Some Remarks on the French Tenure of Franc Aleu Rotu- 
 rier and its relation to the Feudal and other forms of Tenure, 7. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 102-105. The same royal favor was similarly granted, 
 at various times, to the Recollets, the Ursulines, and to the authorities of the Hotel- 
 Dieu of Quebec (^Ibid. 98, 243-244). 
 
 ^ "A freehold, exempt from all burdens, and subject to no seigniorial rights or 
 dues, either pecuniary or honorary " (Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revo- 
 lution, 342).
 
 54 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 fealty and homage, was the duty of performing some specified 
 religious, educational, or charitable service in return for the 
 grant.^ Usually this latter obligation was definitely set forth in 
 the title-deed. Thus, for example, some of the grants made to 
 the Jesuit order by the Company of One Hundred Associates 
 stipulate that the fathers shall, on the first Tuesday of the 
 month of December, — which is the date of the annual meeting 
 of the company, — "say and celebrate forever a mass for the 
 repose of the souls of the deceased copartners of the company, 
 to which they shall be obliged to invite the officer commanding 
 for the said company within the fort of Quebec, that he may 
 attend thereat if he think fit."^ Occasionally, however, the 
 obligation is expressed in more general terms, as, for example, 
 in the case of the grant of La Prairie de la Magdelaine, which 
 was given to the Jesuits in 1647 merely in order, as the title- 
 deed states, "that the company may be participating in their 
 prayers and holy sacrifices." ^ One can scarcely fail to remark 
 the ostentation with which professions of religious impulses on 
 behalf of the French crown are inserted, not only in all the 
 ecclesiastical title-deeds, but in many of the purely secular ones 
 as well. On more than one occasion laymen are informed, in 
 the preambles of their deeds, that " His Majesty has always 
 sought, with that zeal which is suitable to his title as eldest son 
 of the Church, the means of making known in the most unex- 
 plored countries, by the propagation of the faith and the dif- 
 fusion of the Gospel, the glory of God and the Christian 
 name, — the first and principal object of his estabHshment 
 of the French colony in Canada." ^ As the Jesuits were the 
 most active and successful agents in this work, their order was 
 made the recipient of the royal bounty to a very generous 
 degree.^ 
 
 4. By far the greater part of the larger land grants were made 
 en fief or en seigneiirie^ terms which were used synonymously 
 in the colony. The few concessions, made either by the com- 
 
 ^ On the nature of tenure en franche aumbne, see Henrion de Pansey, Disserta- 
 tions Feodales, ii. 54-149 ; and VioUet, Histoire du Droit Civil Franfais, 702-708. 
 2 Titres des Seigneuries, 344. ^ Ibid. 75. 
 
 * Cf. Ibid. 1 1-43. ^ See below, ch. x.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 55 
 
 panics or by the crown, to be held under other terms, must be 
 looked upon as exceptions to the general rule ; for, when peti- 
 tioners applied to the colonial authorities for grants of land, 
 they invariably, if their applications were favorably entertained, 
 received grants en seignetirie, unless some special circumstance 
 or circumstances rendered some deviation from the rule advis- 
 able. The seigniory was the basal unit of the colonial land- 
 tenure system. 
 
 Seigniorial grants were not regulated, in regard to their 
 area, by any fixed rule, but were in this respect left to the 
 discretion of the royal officials in the colony. Hence they 
 varied very widely in extent, ranging from small plots con- 
 taining only a few square arpents, to huge tracts containing 
 many square leagues and more extensive than many European 
 principaHties. ^ In determining the area several things were 
 taken into consideration, — the rank of the grantee, his ser- 
 vices to the crown, his means, the location of the grant 
 ( whether favorable or otherwise ), the nature of the land, and 
 so on. As a rule, the boundaries of the grant were stated 
 in the title-deed with a fair degree of definiteness ; but not 
 infrequently the delimitation was so vague or ambiguous as 
 to result in subsequent disputes. The reason for this confusion 
 seems to have been that the applicant, in making his petition, 
 usually described the bounds of the territory, and the authorities, 
 in drafting the deeds, merely followed this description, which 
 would later often prove to be inaccurate. Surveys preliminary 
 to the making of seigniorial grants seem almost never to 
 have been made. The common practice was, apparently, to 
 fix the bounds of a new grant by reference to some grant or 
 grants already made;^ and, when these had themselves been 
 vaguely defined, abundant room for dispute was afforded.^ 
 
 1 The seigniory of Minville, for example, was sixteen by fifty arpents, that of 
 Gubin ten by twelve leagues. See Titres des Seignettries, 296, 367. 
 
 2 For example, the seigniory Des Islets de Beaumont (1672) comprised "all 
 tJiat quantity of land which may be found on the River St. Lawrence between the 
 property of the Sieur Bissot and that of M. de la Durantaye" {Ibid. 298). 
 
 •'' In 1676 the king gave orders that all seigniorial grants should be located 
 ciintiguously (Edits et Ordonttances, i. 90). There seem, nevertheless, to have been 
 frequent departures from this rule.
 
 56 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 Whatever the area of the seigniorial grant, however, or wher- 
 ever its location, it invariably assumed the shape of a parallelo- 
 gram, with the shorter side fronting on the river, a fact which, as 
 will be seen later, had a very interesting and important bearing 
 on the system in the final period of its history, and was in- 
 directly one of the most potent causes of its downfall.^ 
 
 On being placed in possession of his seigniorial grant, the 
 seignior was put under certain well-defined obligations toward 
 the company or the crown as dominant seignior. First among 
 these was the performance of the ceremony of fealty and homage 
 {foi et hommage), an obeisance which has always been accounted 
 an indispensable obligation of every seignior to his dominant 
 lord. In the heyday of feudalism the ceremony consisted of 
 two quite distinct parts, — the taking of an oath of fealty or 
 allegiance involving pledge of fidelity, and the performing of 
 some symbolic act of homage expressive of submission to con- 
 trol ; but as the two parts were invariably performed on the 
 same visit of the seignior to his dominant lord, the ceremony in 
 time lost its double significance. In New France the seignior 
 was under obligation to appear, within a reasonable time after 
 coming into possession of his fief (whether by grant, purchase, 
 or succession), or upon the occasion of each succession to the 
 French throne of a new sovereign, before the royal representa- 
 tive at the Chateau de St. Louis in Quebec, there with uncovered 
 head and on bended knee to render his fealty and homage. 
 When the colony passed into the hands of Great Britain the 
 obligation continued in existence, and was regularly rendered 
 by the seigniors to the representative of the new sovereign, 
 the governor-general.2 The last act of fealty and homage was 
 
 ^ Below, pp. 235-238. 
 
 2 In Actes de Foi et Hommage, iv. 43, is found a detailed description of this cere- 
 mony as performed by one of the seigniors before General Murray, the first British 
 governor-general : " In the year 1760, on the 23rd of December in the forenoon, in 
 the presence and in the company of royal notaries in the military court and council 
 of Quebec, Jean Noel, dwelling in this city . . . repaired to the government house of 
 Quebec, and at the principal door or entrance of the said house, where being, the 
 said Noel, having knocked at the door, there immediately came a servant, of His 
 Excellency James Murray, governor-general of Quebec, and the said Noel having 
 demanded of the said servant if His Excellency James Murray was in his aforesaid
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 57 
 
 performed on the eve of the abolition of the seigniorial system 
 in Canada, February 3, 1854, by J. S. C. Wurtele, Esq., be- 
 fore Major-General William Rowan, administrator of the 
 colony. 
 
 In addition to rendering fealty and homage, the seignior 
 was obliged, within the space of forty days after receiving his 
 grant, to deposit with the proper authorities at Quebec an aveit 
 et denombrenient. This was a paper comprising two separate 
 documents, — the aveu, which was a general map or plan of the 
 seigniory, showing its location in the colony, its boundaries, and 
 configuration, and tho-denombreinejit, which was, on the other hand, 
 a detailed description or census of the seigniory, setting forth the 
 circumstances under which the grant was originally made and 
 the manner in which it had come into the hands of the present 
 owner, together with the terms of tenure, the acreage {arpentagi) 
 of the seigniory, the degree or degrees of jurisdiction possessed 
 by the seignior, and various other data. Within forty days after 
 a mutation in the ownership of a fief, the aveii et detiombrement 
 was filed again, and in this case a detailed statement of the 
 progress made in the development of the seigniory was included. 
 This report set forth the number of acres cleared and the num- 
 ber under cultivation, the number of subgrants made either en 
 arrikre fief or en censive, the number of settlers on each grant, 
 the amount of produce raised by these settlers in the last year, 
 
 government house, the said servant said that His Excellency was within and that he 
 would go and give him notice, and His Excellency having appeared, the said Jean 
 Noel, in accordance with his duty as a vassal, without sword or spur, his head uncov- 
 ered, and one knee on the ground, said to him that he performed faith and homage 
 on account of his land and seigniory of Tilly and Bonsecours holden in full fief of 
 His Britannic Majesty, which fief belonged to him as eldest son and heir of the late 
 Philippe Noel his father . . . which faith and homage His Excellency received from 
 the said Jean Noel, who made oath on the Holy Evangelists to be faithful to His 
 Britannic Majesty, to do nothing contrary to his interests, to keep his vassals in the 
 obedience which they owe to their king, the present faith and homage received sub- 
 ject to the condition on the part of the said Noel to furnish his aveu et denombrement 
 within the usual time, and the dues which he may owe by reason of the mutation 
 of the said fiefs and seigniories agreeably to the original title-deeds. Of all of which 
 the said Jean Noel has demanded Acte of the undersigned notaries, who have 
 granted him the same . . . and His Excellency has signed, also the said Jean 
 Noel. . . . 
 
 "J. Murray, Jean Noel, Barolet, Panet."
 
 58 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 the number of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine in the seign- 
 iory, the location and structure of the seigniorial manor, mill, 
 and church, if such had been erected, the presence of any oak 
 or pine timber suitable for use in the royal shipyards which 
 might have been found within the limits of the grant, and a 
 statement of the profits annually derived from the seigniory. ^ 
 
 In many of the title-deeds the stipulation was made that an 
 aveu et denoinbrement should be made at certain specified times 
 whether the seigniory changed hands or not,^ the usual period 
 in such cases being an interval of twenty years. These returns 
 were placed on file at Quebec, and formed a most convenient 
 source of data for the compilation of the frequent reports re- 
 quired by the home authorities as to the agricultural progress 
 of the colony. One cannot but admire the facility with which 
 the colonial officials were able to present detailed statements of 
 conditions in New France on the shortest notice. Requests for 
 such statements came from the French government by the 
 spring vessels, and the returns had to be transmitted by the 
 same ships when they sailed in the autumn. In almost every 
 case the governor and intendant were able to compile the desired 
 reports from the data on file in their office at Quebec ; and, so 
 far as one may judge at the present day, these reports were 
 accurate and trustworthy. It was the system of aveu et d^nom- 
 brcmefit that rendered statistical data so accessible. 
 
 A third obligation imposed upon the seigniors was that of 
 subgranting the lands within their seigniories, or, as it was 
 officially called, XhQJeu defief. This obligation has an especial 
 interest from the fact that it had no existence in France, but 
 was peculiar to the colony ; it is one of the features which 
 served to give the seigniorial system, in Canada a character and 
 individuality somewhat distinct from that which it possessed 
 in the motherland. Its introduction into the colony marks an 
 attempt on the part of the royal authorities to modify the 
 system in such a way as to adapt it to the circumstances of a 
 
 ^ Cotittime de Paris, articles viii, x, xi; cf. also Report of the Solicitor-General 
 to the Council, 1790, Titles and Documents relating to the Seigniorial Tentire, 
 i. 27. 
 
 2 See, for example, the title-deed of the seigniory of Isle aux Ruaux, Titres des 
 Seigneuries, 46.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 59 
 
 new country whose most pressing need was an influx of set- 
 tlers. 
 
 The Custom of Paris, which was, one might say, the common 
 law of New France, imposed upon the seignior no obligation 
 to subinfeudate his fief. On the contrary, it expressly forbade 
 the alienation of more than two-thirds of its extent, and even up 
 to that point permitted alienation only under certain conditions.^ 
 For a considerable time after the introduction of the seigniorial 
 system in New France, the seigniors were left entirely free to 
 alienate, subgrant, or otherwise dispose of their holdings on 
 whatever terms might seem best to themselves ; or, on the other 
 hand, they were left just as free to refuse to alienate or subgrant 
 any portion of their seigniories. Down to 171 1 not a single 
 seigniorial title-deed definitely imposed any obligation to sub- 
 grant lands; and after that date only four deeds contained any 
 reference to such condition.^ The seignior was regarded by the 
 crown, not as a mere Jideicommis, but as having a dominium 
 plenum in his grant. 
 
 It was, however, as has been already noted, the earnest desire 
 of the French crown to have the colony settled as rapidly as 
 possible ; and it was not very long before the marked propen- 
 sity of many seigniors to hold their grants for speculative 
 purposes began to stand in the way of the royal desires. 
 Settlers found, on arrival in the colony, that they had either 
 to take up unfavorable locations in out-of-the-way seigniories, or 
 else pay a bonus to the more favored seigniors for choice 
 locations; and, naturally enough, they protested. As it was not 
 the intention of Louis XIV that the seigniorial system should 
 
 1 " Le vassal ne peut demembrer son fief au prejudice et sans le consentement de 
 son seigneur : bien se peut jouir et disposer et faire son profit des heritages, rentes, 
 ou cens, etant du dit fief sans payer profit au seigneur dominant, pourvu que I'alien- 
 ation n'excede des deux-tiers et qu'il en retienne la foi entiere et quelque droit 
 seigneurial et domainal sur ce qu'il aliene " (^Coiitume de Paris, article 11). 
 
 ^ These were the deeds to the following seigniories : Beaumont, April lO, 1 713, 
 granted " subject to the condition of conceding the said lands at a simple rent 
 charge" {Titres des Seignet0-ies,64) ; Mille Isles, March 5, 17 14, the grantee "to 
 concede the said lands subject to simple dues" {Ibid. 59) ; Deux Montagnes, Octo- 
 ber 17, 1 71 7, the grantee "to concede at a simple rent charge ... as provided" 
 {Ibid. 337); St. Jean, April 18, 1727, "subject to the condition . . . not to concede 
 the said lands except on a simple rent charge " {Brevets de Ratification, 84).
 
 6o 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 thus operate as a hindrance to colonial development, he inter- 
 vened, as soon as the matter was brought to his notice, in 
 such a way as distinctly to limit the seigniorial pretensions. 
 
 The first reference — but a very indirect and inconclusive 
 one — to the existence of any obligation on the part of seign- 
 iors to subgrant their lands appears in the title-deed of the 
 seigniory of Ste. Anne de la Perade, in 1672. One of the con- 
 ditions named in this deed was that the seignior should, " in 
 granting lands, stipulate with his habitants or tenants {tena72cicrs) 
 in such wise as to compel the latter to take up residence upon 
 their grants within the space of one year from the date of 
 concession." 1 This clause can, however, scarcely be taken as 
 implying any obligation to subgrant ; it merely provides that, if 
 the seignior did choose to make subgrants, he must, in such 
 cases, impose a certain condition. 
 
 From 1672 onward, this or a similar clause appears in a 
 number of deeds.^ In a few cases the bond stipulates that 
 the seignior himself shall reside on his land, without obliging 
 him to exact any similar condition of his tenants. ^ In at 
 least one case, that of the seigniory of Ste. Anne des Monts 
 (1688), the wording of the deed is such as to imply that the 
 power of subgranting seigniorial lands is permissive and not 
 mandatory, for reference is made to "those grants which the 
 seignior will be allowed to make in the said seigniory,"* As 
 a matter of fact, some of the seigniories were too small in extent 
 to permit any subinfeudation ; such, for example, was the seign- 
 iory of Isle aux Ruaux, granted to the Jesuits to be used as 
 a pasture for their stock, and none too large for this purpose 
 alone.^ The seigniory of Isle St. Joseph, near Three Rivers, 
 which comprised less than fifty arpents in all, is a type of the 
 small seigniory to which any requirement of subinfeudation 
 can scarcely have been intended to apply.® 
 
 In some few cases the right to subgrant lands within seign- 
 iories was expressly restricted by provisions contained in the 
 title-deeds. Thus, the deed of the seigniory of D'Autray con- 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 275. 
 
 2 For example, the title-deed of Longueuil, Ibid. 99. 
 
 * Ibid. 329. 5 ji^ij^ ^6^ 
 
 3 Ibid. 12. 
 6 Ibid. 85.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 6 1 
 
 tained a clause providing that grants might be made " only to 
 persons already residing in New France " ; while the deed con- 
 veying the island of Montreal to the Seminary of St. Sulpice 
 permitted the making of grants " only to persons not already 
 inhabitants of New France but who shall emigrate thither." ^ In 
 the deed of the Isle aux Coudres to the Jesuit seminary at Quebec 
 appears the provision that the lands shall be settled only by per- 
 sons belonging to the seminary or directly connected therewith. ^ 
 
 In the face of these facts, it can hardly be maintained that, 
 down to 171 1 at least, any obligation rested upon the Canadian 
 seigniors as a class to subgrant lands within their seigniories 
 to all who should apply for such grants. In fact, during the 
 earlier days of the colony's history there would seem to have 
 been no need of the establishment or imposition of any such 
 obligation ; common prudence would ordinarily have been 
 enough to induce any seignior to adopt the means which were 
 obviously the easiest and most effectual for settling his seigniory 
 and thus increasing its value. From time to time, to be sure, 
 the king emphasized his desire to have the lands of the colony 
 cleared ; but down to 171 1 no attempt was made to insist upon 
 the adoption of any particular means of attaining this end. So 
 far as the law was concerned, the seignior could fully satisfy 
 the royal desires by having the lands cleared by hired labor if 
 he should see fit, instead of by making en ccnsive grants ; for 
 the mere reiteration of the royal desire for the speedy clearing 
 of the lands could scarcely be construed as establishing a legal 
 obligation to subinfeudate. Unfortunately, however, the Cana- 
 dian seignior, by his persistent neglect to have his lands cleared 
 either through his own enterprise or through that of others, 
 and by his policy of holding his uncleared lands for specula- 
 tive purposes, forced the king, in the end, to drastic action. 
 
 His first decisive step was the issue of the Arrets of Marly in 
 171 1, one of which provided that "within a year at the farthest 
 - . . all the inhabitants of New France to whom His Majesty 
 has granted lands en seignenrie, who have no domain cleared and 
 who have no settlers upon their grants, shall be held to bring 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 356, 365. ' Ibid. 322.
 
 62 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 them under cultivation by placing settlers thereon." ^ The un- 
 equivocal language of this arret was fully understood as estab- 
 lishing an obligation to subgrant lands ; ^ for, in the arret 
 drafted some years later by Messrs. Deshaguais and Dagues- 
 seau, reference is made to the Arrets of Marly as having 
 " obliged seigniors who have lands for concession within the 
 limits of their seigniories, to concede them as an essential to the 
 settlement and growth of the colony."^ Futhermore, the whole 
 tenor of the Arret of Versailles (1732),^ and of the royal declara- 
 tion of 1 743,^ serves to establish beyond doubt that the king de- 
 sired to place the seigniors under a legal obligation to subgrant 
 the lands within their seigniories ; and that it was, moreover, the 
 royal wish that every settler who went to the colony should be 
 entitled to demand a concession out of the ungranted lands of 
 any seigniory, and to receive such without the necessity of 
 paying therefor anything save and except the ordinary seign- 
 iorial dues at such times as these might become payable. It was 
 in order to insure these rights to settlers that the king empowered 
 the governor and intendant to make the grants whenever the 
 seignior should show an indisposition to do so.^ In the interest 
 of colonial development, this action on the part of the king 
 was highly commendable ; it shows, as many of his orders 
 clearly show, the deep interest which Louis XIV took in 
 everything that pertained to the advantage of New France. 
 After 171 1 the Canadian seignior was no longer possessed of 
 any right of property in the ungranted lands of his seigniory ; 
 he was merely a fideicommis for the crown. His position and 
 powers had, in this respect, become differentiated from those of 
 the seignior at home. 
 
 A fourth obligation incumbent upon all holders of lands e7t 
 seigneurie was the payment of a mutation fine known as the quint, 
 the only pecuniary tribute rendered by the seignior to the com- 
 pany or the crown as dominant seignior. The amount of the 
 quint, as fixed by the Custom of Paris," was one-fifth of the muta- 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i, 324-325. 
 ^ See above, p. 42. 
 6 Ibid. 572. 
 ■^ Article xxv. 
 
 2 See above, pp. 42-43. 
 
 * Edits et Ordonnances, i. 531. 
 
 8 See above, p. 43.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 63 
 
 tion value of the seigniory; but it was the custom of the com- 
 pany, and this custom was followed by the crown, to allow a re- 
 bate of one-third of the amount paid.^ In several other French 
 contwnes, the payment of the requint, or an additional fifth of 
 the fifth, — making six twenty-fifths in all, — was rendered obliga- 
 tory; but no attempt seems to have been made to exact the 
 requint in Canada. 
 
 The quint became due and payable upon each mutation of 
 the ownership of a seigniory, whether by sale, by contract equiva- 
 lent to sale, by gift, or by inheritance other than in direct suc- 
 cession.2 Lineal descendants succeeding to seigniorial lands 
 were thus the only ones exempt. As the mutation value of 
 seigniorial lands was never great during any part of the French 
 regime, the amount of revenue derived by the royal treasury 
 from this source was not of importance; and even after the 
 British conquest, when the lands of the colony had undergone 
 a very marked increase in value, the proceeds of the quint 
 formed but a very modest sum per year. In the general 
 list of colonial revenues they make but an insignificant item. 
 During the years intervening between the cession of the colony 
 to Great Britain and the abolition of the seigniorial tenure in 
 1854, the average income from the quints of all the seigniories 
 was less than fifteen hundred dollars per annum.^ 
 
 During the dominancy of the Company of One Hundred As- 
 sociates some seigniories had been granted under the special 
 custom of the French Vexin, a small body of rules not form- 
 ing part of the Coutume de Paris, but supplementary to it.* In 
 these cases a mutation fine, commonly called the relief, was sub- 
 stituted for the quint. The relief was the equivalent of one 
 year's estimated revenue from the seigniory, and became due 
 and payable upon every mutation of ownership, whether by 
 
 ^ Cugnet, Traite de la Loi des Fiefs, 1 1. 
 
 2 Coutume de Paris, articles vi, xxiii. Cf. also Cugnet, Traite de la Loi des Fiefs, 9. 
 
 3 During the thirteen years 1775-1788 the amount was ;^ 3148. is. 4^/.; during the 
 period 1 803-1 841 it was ;^7385. 95. 40'. See Titles and Documents, i. 40, 175. 
 
 * The rules of Vexin le Francois relating to the payment of the relief are printed 
 in Abstract of those Parts of the Custom of the Viscounty and Provostship of Paris, 
 •which were received and practised in the Province of Qziebec in the time of the French 
 Government (1772), 14. See below, p. 198, note.
 
 64 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 inheritance, purchase, or otherwise ; there were no exemptions. 
 In some cases the company made the stipulation that one 
 ounce of gold {une maille d'or) should be paid in lieu of the 
 relief.^ 
 
 The relief does not appear to have been exacted after the 
 conquest. In the collection of laws compiled by order of Gov- 
 ernor Carleton, the provisions relating to the obligation of the 
 relief were omitted on the ground that they had " not lately 
 been operative in Canada." Cugnet declares that the right of 
 exacting the relief had been abrogated by the king " in an edict 
 duly registered at Quebec in 1676." ^ This edict does not, 
 however, contain any express abrogation of the right to exact 
 the rehef ; but it does provide that grants made under the cus- 
 tom of the French Vexin shall henceforth be deemed to be held 
 under the Custom of Paris. In other words, the intention of the 
 edict seems to have been to replace the relief by the quint in all 
 cases in which the original title-deeds had made the former 
 payable. In general, it may safely be said that the payment 
 either of the quint or of the relief was never a substantial 
 burden upon the seigniors or a source of considerable profit 
 to the crown, and that apparently its existence did not prove 
 an important hindrance to the transfer of seigniorial hold- 
 ings. 
 
 A fifth duty, that of rendering military service, was ex- 
 pected of the seigniors ; but apparently it was not specifically 
 made a condition of tenure, for the obligation does not appear 
 in the title-deeds of any of the seigniorial grants made by the 
 crown. It is true that, in the grant of the whole colony to the 
 Marquis de la Roche, a provision was inserted to the effect that 
 the marquis should make grants to persons on condition that 
 they should " aid in the support and defence of the said coun- 
 try " ; and, furthermore. La Roche was permitted for a short 
 term of years to relieve his settlers from all conditions " except- 
 ing the duty of service in time of war " ; but he made no grants 
 upon this or any other condition.^ 
 
 The fact is, the French government counted upon the service 
 
 1 For example, in the seigniory of Beauport. See Titres des Seignetiries, 386. 
 
 2 Cugnet, Traite de la Loi des Fiefs, 5. ^ See above, pp. 18-19.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 65 
 
 of all colonists, whether landholders or not. In all the corre- 
 spondence which passed between the home and the colonial 
 authorities with reference to the military resources of the 
 colony, the liability, and even the willingness, of the whole 
 adult male population of the colony to render military service 
 was taken as unquestionable. This fact appears clearly in the 
 discussion as to the advisability of disbanding regiments in the 
 colony after the purpose for which they had been sent out had 
 been accompHshed. The main advantage claimed for the policy 
 was that the settlement of veterans in New France would add 
 appreciably to its military strength. 
 
 According to the laws of France, all those holding en fief or 
 en seigneiirie mediately or immediately from the crown were, 
 with their dependents, liable to be called upon for military ser- 
 vice. By an important edict, issued in 1674, Louis XIV made 
 it obligatory that " all nobles, barons, chevaliers, esquires, vas- 
 sals, and others holding en fief or en arrierefief shall, all ex- 
 cuses apart, put themselves in arms, mounted and equipped, 
 according to that to which they shall be held bound, and shall 
 be present on the days and at the places fixed." ^ The terms 
 of this edict, however, were never expressly applied to New 
 France ; and it is at least questionable whether any royal de- 
 cree, issued after 1663, could be binding in the colony without 
 having been enregistered by the Sovereign (Superior) Council 
 at Quebec.^ 
 
 Furthermore, when the seignior took the oath of fealty, which, 
 in the words of one of the prominent seigniors after 1763, 
 pledged " the fidelity and military service of all possessors of 
 fiefs and arriere-fiefs," he promised his service in arms when 
 called upon.3 In explaining to the home authorities, in 1768, 
 
 1 " Lettres-patentes pour la convocation du ban et arriere-ban," August 11, 1674, 
 in Isambert, Recueil General des Anciennes Lois Franfaises, xix. 138-144. 
 
 2 This question is discussed at length in Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Ghierale 
 du Droit Civil Canadien, 1 18-127. 
 
 * Cf. the answers of Charles de Lanaudiere to some of the questions proposed by 
 the "Honorable Committee of the Whole Council," October 17, 1790, Titles and 
 Documents, i. 35, 38. " L'acte de foi et hommage . . . contenant ordinaire- 
 ment una clause relatant les obligations militaires du vassal vis-a-vis du suzerain" 
 (VioUet, Histoire du Droit Civil Fran^ais, 649).
 
 66 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 the main incidents of the seigniorial tenure, Governor Carleton 
 declared : " The oath which the seigniors take is very solemn 
 and binding ; they are obliged ... to discharge whatever 
 they owe to their sovereign, and to appear in arms for his 
 defence in case his province is ever attacked." ^ The ob- 
 ligation of military service on the part of the seigniors, and 
 through them on the part of those holding of them, was thus 
 regarded as having full force and effect, even though it did not 
 appear expressly in any of the title-deeds. This omission has 
 apparently led some writers to the inference that the obhgation 
 had no existence in the colony.^ 
 
 During the greater part of the French regime the seigniors 
 were forced by the stern logic of facts to be in constant readi- 
 ness to defend their seigniories; for, exposed as it was both to 
 the Iroquois and to the English, the valley of the St. Lawrence 
 was almost never free from marauding bands of raiders, both 
 white and red. The seigniories were scattered along the banks 
 of the stream, often far removed from the nearest fortified post ; 
 and the small force of royal troops kept in the colony was 
 never adequate for the effective defence of any considerable 
 portion of its area. Left thus to shift for himself, the seignior 
 naturally sought to increase the defensive strength of his own 
 habitants, striving in this way to compensate, as far as possible, 
 for the weakness of the central power.^ He also aimed to build 
 his manor-house so that it could be defended against Indian 
 assaults, often constructing it of stone, with small windows and 
 stanch hard-wood doors, and planning the whole with an eye 
 to strength as well as to comfort. In a few cases the seigniorial 
 manor-house assumed the proportions of a mediaeval castle. 
 The commodious chateau of Lemoyne de Longueuil, for ex- 
 ample, was built of solid masonry and flanked by four strong 
 towers, or bastions, each loopholed in such a way as to permit a 
 
 1 Carleton to Shelburne, April 12, 176S, in State Paper Office, America and West 
 Indies, vol. cccxxvi, No. t,t,. 
 
 2 Cf. Weir, Administration of the Old Rigime in Canada, 67; and Parkman, 
 The Old Regime in Canada, ii. 42. 
 
 3 In 1674 Frontenac informed the minister that he had ordered all the seigniors 
 of the colony to drill their habitants as often as possible (^Documents relating to 
 the Colonial History of New York, ix. n6).
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 6/ 
 
 flanking fire.^ Its resemblance to the fortified castles of France 
 was noted by Frontenac.^ 
 
 Another way in which the seigniors sought to strengthen 
 themselves in the event of attack was by offering particular 
 inducements to retired soldiers, in order to secure them as 
 settlers on their grants. Such settlers were given desirable 
 locations, and were not infrequently exempted from the pay- 
 ment of the seigniorial dues for a short term of years. They 
 brought their muskets with them, and, in addition to holding 
 themselves in readiness to repel Indian attacks, they rendered 
 effective service in drilling or instructing the other habitants of 
 the seigniories to which they came. Even the religious orders 
 held out special incentives, in their endeavor to have lands 
 within their seigniories taken up by veterans. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking exemplification of the earnest 
 desire on the part of the authorities to supplement the defensive 
 strength of the colony is afforded by the numerous seigniorial 
 grants made to the officers of the Carignan-Salieres regiment in 
 1668-1672. This regiment, the first body of regular troops sent 
 out to New France, was one of the best in the French army.^ 
 Originally recruited from the population of Savoy by the Prince 
 de Carignan, it had seen signal service in the wars of the Fronde, 
 and had won distinction in the service of Austria against the 
 Turks. Under the command of Colonel de Salieres it was sent 
 out to Canada with Tracy in 1665, in order that the Mo- 
 hawks might be crushed once for all and the Five Nations 
 in general impressed with the punitive power of France. 
 When it arrived in the colony the regiment numbered about 
 twelve hundred men of all ranks, among its ofhcers being many 
 dashing young scions of the French noblesse. During the next 
 half-dozen years the operations against the Mohawks and other 
 hostile tribes were carried to a successful outcome, and a per- 
 
 ^ Jodoin and Vincent, Ilistoire de Longuetnl, 296-297. The structure was 170 by 
 200 feet in area. See also below, p. 167. 
 
 - " Son fort et sa maison nous donnent une idee des chateaux de France fortifiez " 
 (Frontenac to Minister, October 15, 1698, Correspondance Generale, vol. xvi). 
 
 * For various details regarding the history of this notable regiment both in 
 Europe and in America, see Benjamin Suite, Le Regiment de Carigttan, in Royal 
 Society of Canada, Proceedings, 1902, Meinoires, sec. i. 25-95.
 
 68 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 manent peace, based upon a new and wholesome respect for 
 the miHtary strength of colonial France, was concluded with 
 the Iroquois. 
 
 Ordinarily the regiment, when it had finished its work, would 
 have been ordered home again ; for the king could scarcely be 
 expected to bear the heavy cost of maintaining so large a force 
 in the colony.^ Talon, however, came forward with a proposal 
 that an effort be made to keep at least a part of the regiment in 
 the country by inducing officers and men to become settlers ; 
 and with this object in mind the intendant, with the approval of 
 Tracy, drew up and despatched to the minister in Paris an 
 elaborate project of military colonization.^ He placed strong 
 emphasis on the advantages that would accrue from the settle- 
 ment of so many trained soldiers in the colony, mentioning, 
 among other things, the impetus which would be given to the 
 colonial military spirit. He pointed out that, once firmly estab- 
 lished on the land, the soldier would be as completely at the 
 service of the king as if maintained in garrison, while at the same 
 time his support would no longer be a burden on the treasury, — 
 that, in a word, the king would derive all the advantages of 
 maintaining several hundred regular troops in the colony, and 
 this with only the initial expense of placing the soldiers in a 
 position to support themselves. Talon pointed to the Roman 
 system of military colonization as a precedent.^ The discharged 
 soldier settled in New France would, he claimed, develop a 
 
 1 Part of the regiment was sent home to France in 1668, but four companies 
 were retained. 
 
 2 " Projets de Reglemens qui semblent etre utiles en Canada, proposes . . . par M. 
 Talon," January 24, 1667, Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 29-34. 
 
 ^ " Cette maniere de donner un pays de nouvelle conquete a son exemple dans 
 I'antiquite romaine, et peut repondre ^ celle en laquelle on donnoit autrefois chez les 
 memes romains les champs des provinces subjugees qu'on appeloit pradia militaria : 
 la pratique de ces peuplespolitiques et guerriers peut a mon sentiment etre judicieuse- 
 ment introduite, dans un pays eloigne de mille lieues de son monarque et du corps 
 de I'etat dont il n'est qu'un membre fort detache, qui peut se voir souvent reduit a se 
 soutenir par ses propres forces. EUe est a mon sentiment d'autant plus a estimer 
 qu'elle fera quelque jour au roi, un corps de vieilles troupes qui ne seront plus \ 
 charge a Sa Majeste, et cependant capables de conserver le corps de cet etat naissant 
 de Canada avec tous les accroissemens qu'il peut re9evoir contre les incursions des 
 isauvages ou les violentes invasions des europeens, meme dans les besoins pressants 
 At. I'ancienne France, fournir un secours considerable a Sa Majeste" {Ibid. 32).
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 69 
 
 peculiar attachment to the colony as his own heritage, and 
 would in consequence have a more aggressive interest in its 
 defence.^ He suggested that the lands given both to military 
 and to civilian settlers should be granted on the most favorable 
 terms, ability to serve the crown well in time of war being made 
 the ground of exemption from the usual payments. He pro- 
 posed, in fact, that the title-deeds should expressly state the 
 military nature of the tenure, and that upon the grantees should 
 be imposed the obligation of sending their eldest sons, on 
 attaining the age of sixteen years, to serve the king for a time 
 on garrison duty without pay.^ 
 
 The proposals of Talon were favorably considered by the 
 king and minister in France ; and in due course the intendant 
 received despatches warmly approving of the projects, and giv- 
 ing instructions as to the manner of carrying them into effect. 
 In accordance with these instructions. Talon arranged to grant 
 seigniories to the officers of the regiment, and in so doing gave 
 locations with direct reference to the vulnerable points in the 
 colonial frontier. The most critical spot of all was the country 
 along the Richelieu River. Though well adapted for settle- 
 ment, it was dangerously exposed to Iroquois attacks, for it lay 
 between the French settlements and the territories of the power- 
 ful and aggressive Mohawks ; hence, much as the French au- 
 thorities wished to have the district populated, settlers had 
 shown no disposition to push out into the region. It was only 
 natural, therefore, that Talon should regard this district as most 
 suitable for the settlement of the military colonists. Accord- 
 
 ^ " D'un cote, elle epargnoit les finances du tresor public, et que de I'autre, elle 
 interessoit I'officier et le soldat en la conservation du pays, comma en celle de son 
 propre heritage" (^Edits et Ordonnances, ii, 2)Z)- 
 
 ^ " Et pour le benefice qu'elles [qu'ils] regoivent par la concession de la terre au 
 lieu de cens sur cens, censives ou autre redevances qu'emportent avec soi les conces- 
 sions de ce pays, ils engageront au service du roi leur premier-ne lorsqu'il aura atteint 
 I'age de seize ans, qui commen^era son noviciat dans une garnison des forts, sans qu'il 
 puisse pretendre autre solde que celle de sa subsistance, ou celle qui lui pourra ?tre 
 ordonnee par les etats de Sa Majeste durant le service qu'il rendra. Cette obligation 
 n'ajoute presque rien a celle qu'un veritable sujet apporte au monde avec sa nais- 
 sance, mais il semble que lorsque cette condition est stipulee, elle est moins rude 
 quand elle est exigee que lorsqu'il n'en est rien dit dans les contrats des terres 
 donnees comme se donnent toutes celles du Canada " (^Ibid.').
 
 70. THE SEIGIVIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 ingly, generous tracts lying along the river, from its junction 
 with the St Lawrence to a point near the present town of 
 Chambly, were parcelled out e7i seigneiirie among the Carignan 
 officers, who, in turn, were instructed to subgrant the lands 
 among their former soldiers. In all about twenty-five or thirty 
 officers, chiefly captains and lieutenants, together with some- 
 what more than four hundred non-commissioned officers and 
 soldiers, decided to avail themselves of the opportunity to be- 
 come permanent settlers. 
 
 As neither officers nor men possessed the capital wherewith to 
 develop their grants, the king provided some twelve thousand 
 livres to be divided among the officers as the intendant might 
 deem fit. The sums apportioned out of this amount do not 
 seem to have been granted according to any fixed rule. To 
 the non-commissioned officers and soldiers fixed amounts were 
 given from the royal treasury, each non-commissioned officer 
 receiving one hundred and fifty livres, or one hundred livres and 
 a year's rations, at his choice, and each soldier one hundred livres 
 in cash, or fifty livres and a year's rations, at his option. It was 
 in this way that the progenitors of some of the leading families of 
 French Canada first became settlers in the country. The names 
 of St. Ours, Saurel (Sorel), Soulanges, Contrecoeur, Dugue, 
 Varennes, La Valterie, Vercheres, Perrot, Roque, Morel de 
 la Durantaye, Berthier, Chambly, Lanaudi^re, Granville, and 
 many others will be found in the list of those who received 
 seigniories at this time. Several of these, however, subse- 
 quently returned to France.^ 
 
 It is interesting to note that, despite Talon's suggestion, there 
 is no express mention of the obligation of military service among 
 the various conditions of tenure imposed in the title-deeds of 
 the military seigniories. In each case, the preamble states 
 clearly the royal expectation that the settlement of the officers 
 in the colony will serve materially to strengthen its capabiHties 
 of defence ; but there is no definite provision that the rendition 
 of service shall be regarded as an incident of tenure.^ As later 
 
 ^ See Suite, Le Regiment de Carignan, 89. 
 
 2 " His Majesty . . . having judged that there were no surer means of making 
 known the greatness of his name and the strength of his arm than to compose this
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 71 
 
 events showed, however, there was little occasion for insistence 
 on the obligation : the military seignior proved only too ready to 
 gird on his sword on every possible occasion. Several of them 
 were gentilshommes, who did not take very enthusiastically to 
 the prosaic life of the yeoman, but found their real vocation in 
 border raids along the frontiers of New England and New York. 
 But when ofBcers and soldiers had been placed on the land 
 the project of the intendant was not entirely fulfilled. If the 
 colony was to grow from within, the military settlers must 
 have wives; and of these New France afforded no adequate 
 supply. Even before his plan of settlement was completed, 
 Talon prayed the minister to send out consignments of 
 women, strong and vigorous peasant girls for the soldiers, 
 and fifteen demoiselles, or ladies of gentle birth, for the un- 
 married officers who had now become seigniors of New 
 France.^ The generous king promptly directed that the desire 
 of the intendant be gratified ; and for a few years batches of 
 girls in charge of nuns were sent with almost every vessel. 
 As to the character of many of these mothers of French 
 Canada, some contemporary writers have expressed very un- 
 favorable opinions.^ Lahontan gives a racy description of their 
 arrival and distribution among applicants;^ but his picture is 
 
 colony of people properly qualified to fill it up by their labor and application to agri- 
 culture and to maintain it by a vigorous defence against the insults and attacks to 
 which it might hereafter be exposed, has sent to this country a number of his faithful 
 subjects, officers of his troops in the Carignan regiment, most of them, agreeably to 
 the great and pious designs of His Majesty, being willing to connect themselves with 
 the country by forming therein settlements and seigniories . . . and the Sieur de 
 la Durantaye, captain of a company of infantry in the said regiment, having petitioned 
 us to make him a grant of land therein ; 
 
 " We, in consideration of the good, useful, and praiseworthy services which he has 
 rendered to His Majesty in various places, both in Old and New France since he 
 came thither by order of His Majesty, and in view of those which he declares himself 
 willing to render hereafter, . . . have given and granted," etc. (translated from 
 Titres des Seigneuries, 1 5 1 ) . 
 
 ^ Talon to Colbert, November 10, 1670, Correspondance Generale, iii. 86-87. 
 
 ■^ William Perwich, English agent in Paris, wrote. May 22, 1669 : " What y* Gaze- 
 tier mentions of 4 or 500 Women going for America volontaryly is false, becaus they 
 are lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the citty & transported according to 
 the law" (Camden Society, Publications, 1903, p. 13). 
 
 ^ Lahontan, Nouveaux Voyages (1709), i. I1-12.
 
 72 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 in all probability overcolored. There is reason to believe that 
 considerable care was taken by the authorities in selecting the 
 prospective brides who were thus transported to the colony ; 
 and yet we have the unimpeachable testimony of Mere Marie 
 de r Incarnation that there was beancoup de canaille among the 
 arrivals.^ So far as can be ascertained, about five hundred 
 women were sent out by the authorities during the years 1669- 
 1673,^ an enterprise of which the result may be seen in the 
 significant report of Laval that eleven hundred baptisms had 
 been performed during the year 1672.^ According to the 
 census of 1666, the population of the colony was 3,215 souls; 
 in 1673 Frontenac estimated that it was 6,705. If these figures 
 be accepted as accurate, the population had more than doubled 
 in six years ; but there is every reason to believe that Frontenac's 
 estimate was below, rather than above, the mark.* 
 
 The settlement of the officers and soldiers in the colony 
 seems to have stirred up the lay seigniors to make greater 
 efforts in the direction of securing settlers, and for a time 
 there was considerable rivalry in this respect. The majority 
 of the military seigniors, however, were not very successful : 
 as is too often the case, the good soldier made a very indifferent 
 husbandman, for he lacked both the heart and the capacity 
 for pioneer work. Moreover, the soldiers who settled in their 
 seigniories knew for the most part nothing about farming ; and, 
 finding it hard to make both ends meet, many of them aban- 
 doned their fiefs to their creditors.^ Nevertheless, the estab- 
 lishment of the military cantonments along the Richelieu proved 
 advantageous to the colony in more ways than one. It formed 
 a barrier against the Mohawk incursions ; it enabled the French 
 to establish safe bases from which blows might be directed 
 with stealth and rapidity against the outlying hamlets of 
 New England ; and, in addition, on more than one occasion 
 the Richelieu seigniories contributed generously toward the 
 
 1 Mere Marie de I'lncarnation, Lettres, October, 1669. 
 
 2 On the increase of population during this period, see Chapais, Jean Talon, 
 412-413. 
 
 3 Colbert, Lettres, Instructions, et Memoir es (ed. Pierre Clement), iii. pt. ii. 
 54^- * Cf. Chapais, /f a « Talon, ^iZ. 
 
 5 Catalogne's report (above, p. 45).
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 73 
 
 carrying out of various defensive projects. Thus in 1673, 
 when Frontenac decided to build a fort at the junction of the 
 St. Lawrence with Lake Ontario, the personnel of his ex- 
 pedition was, to a considerable extent, drawn from the 
 disbanded Carignans ; and the success which attended the ex- 
 pedition was attributed by the governor chiefly to the discipline 
 which was possible among a force composed so largely of 
 veterans.^ 
 
 It is, of course, true that the colony did not depend for its 
 defence upon the seigniorial array alone. As villages and 
 towns grew up, an official known as the captain of the militia 
 icapitaine de la milice) was appointed in each to see that all 
 those capable of bearing arms were duly enrolled and drilled. 
 It was this utilization of almost every adult male colonist 
 which served, among other things, to give New France a mili- 
 tary strength far greater than her population seemed to war- 
 rant. It was this which gave her such remarkable defensive 
 power during the Seven Years' War, when the colony was a 
 huge armed camp. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing rents and dues, the holder of 
 lands en seigneiirie was under obligation to respect certain 
 royal reservations which were inserted in his title-deed. These 
 varied in different grants, some of them appearing in very 
 few deeds, others in almost all, while a few were so common 
 as to be counted among the permanent incidents of the sys- 
 tem. These were the reservations (i) of lands for fortifications, 
 (2) of timber suitable for use in the royal navy, (3) of mines, 
 ores, and minerals {mines, mineres, et mine'reanx), (4) of rights 
 of way, (5) of the use of beaches, (6) of the right of appeal 
 from the seigniorial to the royal courts, (7) of the right to 
 withhold ratification. 
 
 Very many of the seigniorial title-deeds contained the pro- 
 vision that His Majesty's representatives might at any time 
 take from the seigniory such land as might be found necessary 
 
 ^ Among the officers of the expedition were Dugue, St. Ours, Durantaye, and 
 others. See the journal of the expedition, printed in Documents relating to the 
 Colonial History of New York, \x. 95-114; also Frontenac to Colbert, November 
 13, 1673, Correspondance Generale, vol. iv.
 
 74 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 for the location of forts, batteries, or other military works ; 
 and it was also frequently stipulated that the crown should 
 have the right to take such timber from the forest of the seign- 
 iory as might be needed for the construction of the fortifications, 
 together with such firewood as might be desired for the use of the 
 military garrisons placed in charge of them. For lands and tim- 
 ber so taken, the king was not bound to give any compensation 
 whatever, but he usually did make some return. When lands 
 were taken, for instance, the seignior v/as compensated by a 
 grant of equal area elsewhere ; when building materials were 
 expropriated, monetary indemnification was given. ^ 
 
 In most cases the seignior was required, by a clause in his 
 title-deed, to report to the royal authorities at Quebec the 
 presence on his seigniory of any oak timber suitable for use 
 in the construction of ships, and to let this remain standing 
 until it should be demanded by the naval officials, who were 
 permitted to take what they desired without paying for it. 
 In a few cases pine as well as oak timber was included within 
 the reservation, and in one or two instances a special reserva- 
 tion was made of " all red or pitch pine suitable for making 
 tar." 
 
 In almost every grant, stipulation was made that the seignior 
 should give immediate notice to the king (or company) of all 
 mines or mineral deposits found within the limits of his seign- 
 iory, in order that the share accruing to the crown might be 
 exacted. In a very few cases the royal rights in this regard 
 were expressly waived, and stipulation was made that the 
 seignior might retain full ownership in any minerals discov- 
 ered. 
 
 The king usually reserved the right to open such royal high- 
 ways through the seigniories as the public convenience might 
 from time to time dictate. In fact, some of the grants con- 
 tained a provision that the seignior should himself undertake 
 the building of a road along the water-front of his seigniory. 
 
 In the case of such seigniories as fronted on the St. Lawrence, 
 
 ^ A decree of the Sovereign Council in 1664, for example, ordered the payment 
 to the Sieur Poyrier of 150 livres in compensation for timber taken from his 
 seigniory for use in the construction of a casemate. See Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 18.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 75 
 
 the requirement was usually made that the seigniors should 
 refrain from molesting fishermen using the beaches. The 
 colonial as well as the home authorities were desirous of en- 
 couraging the fishing industry ; and they foresaw that, unless 
 the rights of seigniors to the river-front were strictly limited, 
 the fishermen who plied their vocation in the St. Lawrence 
 would be subjected to restraint and annoyance. As will ap- 
 pear later, however, the seignior was entitled to a share in 
 the fish taken in seigniorial waters,^ 
 
 Whenever seigniors were invested with judicial rights, it 
 was stipulated that they should permit appeals to be carried 
 by suitors from the courts of the seigniory to the royal courts 
 of the colony. This reservation was intended to form a check 
 upon the spread of feudal jurisdiction, and to obviate a too 
 ■extensive growth of private, at the expense of royal, judicial 
 jurisdiction, a precaution which, as will be seen later, was 
 scarcely necessary.^ 
 
 As has been said, the title-deed to a seigniory was drawn up 
 and signed by the governor and intendant at Quebec, and pos- 
 session was given forthwith ; but the title was to be considered 
 valid only in case the ratification of the king should be forth- 
 coming within the space of one year.^ As a matter of fact, 
 however, this reservation was for the most part purely formal ; 
 for it was only on the rarest occasions that the king withheld 
 ratification or made any important modifications in the original 
 terms of the deed.* 
 
 In addition to these reservations, there were several prohibi- 
 tions which appeared with considerable frequency in the seign- 
 iorial grants. Of these the most common was the provision that 
 the seignior should not carry on any trade with the Indians, or 
 allow his dependents to do so. Seigniorial grants made during 
 the company regime invariably contained this injunction, and 
 for a very obvious reason ; but grants made by the crown often 
 omitted it. Other prohibitions, — such, for example, as that 
 which forbade the collection of toll from vessels navigating the 
 waters of the seigniors, — are to be found in isolated cases, but 
 
 ^ Below, p. 140. "^ Below, ch. ix. 
 
 ' Edits et Ordonnances, i. 89-90. * Cf. above, p. 39.
 
 76 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS SUPERIORS. 
 
 they were far from general. In practically every case the inser- 
 tion of them seems to have been dictated by local circumstances. 
 
 These six obhgations — of rendering fealty and homage, of fil- 
 ing the aveii et denombrement, of subinfeudating the seigniory, of 
 paying the quint (or relief), of rendering military service, and 
 of observing the reservations and prohibitions contained in the 
 title-deeds — were the only ones imposed upon the Canadian 
 seignior. Taken together, they were far from being oppres- 
 sive ; in fact, they can hardly be called unreasonable. In view 
 of the numerous rights which seigniors enjoyed with reference 
 to lands granted within their seigniories, the holder of a seign- 
 iorial grant was by no means the least favored individual in the 
 colony. 
 
 It was under one or other of these four forms of tenure 
 that all the larger land grants in the colony were made ; but, as 
 has been shown, the typical large grant was that of a seigniory. 
 The others must be looked upon as clearly exceptional.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 In the foregoing chapter an attempt has been made to explain 
 the various tenures under which the larger grants of land in the 
 colony were held, and to analyze the several obligations im- 
 posed by the crown upon the grantees. It is now in order 
 to examine the forms of tenure in which the smaller tracts 
 were held, and to consider, one by one, the obligations 
 imposed by the seignior upon those who held lands within his 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 Occasionally the seigniors made grants of sub-seigniories, or 
 concessions e7t arrih'e-fief . Grants of this sort were not numer- 
 ous, and yet they can scarcely be called rare. So far as can 
 be learned, there was no dearth of applications for them from 
 incoming settlers of all ranks and conditions, and it seems to 
 be beyond doubt that the seigniors had full power to grant such 
 applications at their discretion ; but very naturally their general 
 attitude was against the creation of sub-seigniories, for the profits 
 accruing to them therefrom were sure to be small. 
 
 The holder of a sub-seigniory was subject to the six general 
 obligations which were imposed by the crown upon the seign- 
 ior.i The only difference was that the fealty and homage of 
 the sub-seignior was rendered to the seignior and not to the 
 representative of the crown ; the aveii et denombrement was 
 filed with the seignior, and not with the registrar at Quebec ; 
 and the quint, when payable, went to the seignior instead of into 
 the royal treasury. In making grants of sub-seigniories, the 
 
 ^ At the time of the abolition of the seigniorial system in 1854, the point was 
 raised that the Arrets of Marly (1711) did not apply the principle of compulsory sub- 
 infeudation to these sub-seigniories. This, however, was not sustained by the Special 
 Court. 
 
 77
 
 y8 THE SEIGNTOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 seigniors usually inserted such reservations and prohibitions as 
 had been imposed upon themselves ; but the only financial 
 emolument accruing to the seignior from the sub-seignior was 
 that derived from the payment of the quint, and the amount of 
 this was rarely of any substantial consequence. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that seigniors preferred to 
 have settlers take their lands, not en arrikre-fief, but en censive, 
 or en rotnre ; for, as will be seen later, the seigniorial rights 
 over such grants were much more extensive, and were more 
 likely to be remunerative. When grants of sub-seigniories were 
 made, there seems always to have been some special reason for 
 giving lands under this tenure. In some cases they were made 
 to relatives of the seignior ; in others they were made because 
 the sub-seignior, in return, agreed to bring over from France a 
 certain number of settlers ; and in still other cases, especially 
 during the periods when the king decided to make no grants 
 of seigniories, they were made to incoming settlers of rank 
 and influence who would ordinarily have received full seign- 
 iorial grants. Sub-seigniories usually took the same physical 
 form as the seigniory within which they were situated, — the 
 shape of a parallelogram with its shorter side fronting on the 
 river. In extent they varied greatly, sometimes comprising half 
 of the main seigniory, but more often only a few hundred 
 square arpents of land. 
 
 With very few exceptions, when an individual applied to a 
 seignior for a grant of land, he received a small farm to be held 
 en censive, ox en rotnre, and thus became technically a "censitaire" 
 or "roturier" of the seignior. ^ These terms were, however, 
 held in such aversion by the peasants that they were very 
 rarely used ; even in the official documents of the old regime 
 the term " habitant " was usually employed instead. 
 
 Between tenure en censive and tenure en rotnre there was 
 in the colony practically no difference. The former expression 
 implied that the land was held subject to the payment of an 
 annual due known as the cens {a titre de cens) ; while the latter 
 indicated that the tenure was a base and not a noble one, and 
 
 1 Hallam {Europe during the Middle Ages, 3d ed., i. 207) points out that there 
 are no English words which properly translate these terms.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 79 
 
 that it was, consequently, subject to a different rule of succes- 
 sion from that which regulated the descent of seigniories or sub- 
 seigniories. For all practical purposes the terms may be used 
 synonymously. 
 
 In a very few cases, grants en ccnsive were obtained directly 
 from the crown and not from a seignior. Some town lots in 
 Quebec were granted in this way, but it was because the land 
 from which the grants were made belonged to the crown. In 
 another instance, some settlers upon en censive lands in the 
 vicinity of Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit) received their title-deeds 
 from the governor and intendant. In this case, titles to the 
 lands which they occupied had, in accordance with the royal 
 instructions, originally been given them by Lamotte-Cadillac, 
 commandant of the fort ; but, the deeds proving to be irregular, 
 the king, in 17 16, ordered all grants to be cancelled and new titles 
 to be issued in regular form,^ a command which was executed 
 some years later.^ These two cases must be regarded as ex- 
 ceptional ; for, as a rule, incoming settlers were compelled to 
 apply to the seigniors for their locations. 
 
 In extent, grants en censive varied considerably. Although 
 in almost every case they assumed the oblong shape, they 
 ranged in width of river frontage from one to five lineal arpents, 
 and in depth from ten to eighty arpents.^ In making subgrants, 
 most of the seigniors do not appear to have followed any fixed 
 system of survey, the boundaries of allotments being indicated 
 with considerable carelessness. One grant would be made ; 
 then others would be given alongside it, the more favorable 
 locations being first chosen, and each subsequent grant being 
 delimited in its title-deed by reference to a former concession. 
 Frequently a settler took up a plot of land, and, having decided 
 that it was worth keeping, applied for and received from the 
 seignior a title to the land " held by " him, without any further 
 description of its extent. Many settlers took up locations with- 
 out titles of any sort, others on the mere word of the seignior, 
 
 ^ Jugements et Dclibi-ratioiis du Conseil Superieur de Quebec, vi. 1 21 3 (December 
 I, 1716). 
 
 2 Titres des Seigneur its, 173-175. 
 
 * As noted above (p. 24), the lineal arpent was equivalent to 192 English feet.
 
 8o THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 and still others on informal tickets which established nothing but 
 the fact of the grant. To this haphazard method of allotting 
 lands en ccnsive many of the difficulties which arose between the 
 seignior and his habitants, and between the habitants themselves, 
 can be directly traced. 
 
 The one feature in which there was almost absolute uni- 
 formity was the peculiar shape assumed by all the land- 
 holdings in the colony, whether en seignenrie, en arriere-fief, or 
 en censive. Mr, Suite has endeavored to determine definitely 
 the origin of this peculiar method of shaping grants, distinct 
 traces of which remain in the configuration of the farms along 
 the St. Lawrence River to-day, and which is further perpetuated 
 in the present counties of Quebec, which in many cases are co- 
 extensive with the old seigniories and bear their names. Mr. 
 Suite is inclined to credit the origin of the system to Jean 
 Bourdon, the first surveyor-general of New France, who is said 
 to have thought it wise, in locating seigniories, to economize 
 the frontage granted along the river, but to be generous as to 
 the depth of the grants.^ This plan, it is claimed, gave the 
 seigniors a formula which they followed closely in making their 
 subgrants both en arrih'e-fief 2Si^ eji censive? 
 
 It seems to be more likely, however, that the system merely 
 grew out of the conflicting desires of the crown and the seigniors. 
 Most of those who petitioned for grants of seigniories in New 
 France were men of some rank, and it was only natural that 
 they should want grants of extensive area. These the king, in 
 his desire to induce men of position to emigrate to the colony, 
 was willing to give them, until he found that most of the lands 
 were allowed to remain undeveloped, and that the seigniors 
 were holding them for speculative purposes. Down to the 
 close of the seventeenth century, therefore, extensive grants 
 were the rule. Now, those who appHed for extensive seigniorial 
 grants naturally desired to obtain lands fronting on the St. 
 
 1 See Mr. Suite's article on " The Seigniorial Tenure in Canada," in Canada : an 
 Encydopadia of ike Country (ed. J. Castell Hopkins), vol. iv. 
 
 2 See Jean Bourdon's map of the seigniories on the Lower St. Lawrence (1641), 
 reproduced in Tanguay, Dictionnaire Genealogique des Families Canadiennes, vol. i, 
 Appendix.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 8 1 
 
 Lawrence and situated between Quebec and Montreal, because 
 the river, both in summer and in winter, formed the great high- 
 way of communication. As the amount of this frontage was 
 not unlimited, the authorities had to see that individual seigniors 
 did not receive too much of it ; on the other hand, since there 
 was plenty of land back from the water-front, there appeared 
 to be no immediate necessity of restricting the depth of grants. 
 Hence they gave the seignior access to the river, but only 
 within moderate limits ; and they gave him an extensive area, 
 but only by running his seigniory miles back into the uplands. 
 
 There was, moreover, a reason why the seigniors actually 
 preferred the narrow river frontage. At an early period the 
 colonial authorities began the construction of a road along the 
 north shore of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Montreal, and 
 issued orders that every seignior should build that part of 
 the road which was to lie in his seigniory, while the sections 
 through the ungranted lands were to be built by the crown. ^ 
 As those who applied for seigniorial grants were, of course, not 
 anxious to assume the obligation of constructing any more of 
 this road than was necessary, they probably interposed no ob- 
 jections to receiving their grants in that shape which, while 
 giving them plenty of land as well as access to the river, at the 
 same time reduced the obligation and burden of road-building. 
 Eventually a good road, built by the seigniors and the author- 
 ities, extended all the way from Quebec to Montreal along the 
 north shore of the St. Lawrence, passing through the front of 
 each seigniory and giving the whole colony, as Lord Durham 
 afterward remarked, "the appearance of a never-ending, strag- 
 gling village." ^ 
 
 The same reasons which impelled the authorities to grant 
 seigniories in this shape influenced the seigniors to make en 
 censive grants in oblong form. The habitants wanted lands 
 along the river in order to be near their neighbors on the 
 common waterway ; and after the road was built the desire for 
 front locations was, if anything, even stronger. Moreover, a 
 grant which ran back a long distance from the river had the 
 
 1 Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 412-413. 
 
 2 Durham, Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839), II.
 
 82 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 advantage of giving the holder a variety of land, the slope 
 toward the river being very well suited for cultivation, the 
 uplands affording pasture, and the hills farther inland timber 
 and firewood. These grants along the river-front, extending, 
 as they did, frequently a mile or more inland, formed what was 
 called the " first range " ; it was only after all the good land in 
 this belt was taken up that settlers resorted to the "second 
 range" farther back. 
 
 But in this adaptation of the shape of the grants to the 
 immediate convenience of the authorities, the seigniors, and the 
 habitants, a very serious ultimate disadvantage was apparently 
 not foreseen. This evil resulted from the repeated partitioning 
 of the seigniories and en censive farms among the heirs of 
 holders. By the terms of the Custom of Paris, not more than 
 one-fifth of a holding, whether en seignenrie or en censive, could 
 be devised or otherwise disposed of, except by actual deed of 
 sale, to the prejudice of direct or collateral heirs, who may be 
 said to have had the expectant reversion of the other four 
 fifths.^ The rule of succession differed considerably in the two 
 classes of land, however, as the following summary shows : — 
 
 In the case of lands held en seignetirie, the eldest son took 
 the chief manor-house or seigniorial residence {chateau ou manoir 
 principal), the inner yard {basse conr), and one superficial arpent 
 of land adjoining the house, which was supposed to include the 
 garden {un arpent de terre de Venclos et jardiri). He also took 
 the banal mill, if it happened to be within this enclosure ; but 
 the profits of the mill went to all the heirs in proportion to their 
 landed inheritance. This right on the part of the eldest son 
 was known as the droit d' ainesse, or principle of primo- 
 geniture.^ The remaining lands of the seigniory were disposed 
 of in four ways: (i) when there were but one son and one 
 other child, the eldest son took two-thirds, his brother or sister 
 the remaining third; (2) when there were a son and more than 
 one other child, the eldest son took one half, and the remainder 
 of the seigniory was divided equally among the other children 
 without distinction of age or sex;^ (3) when there were no male 
 
 1 Coutume de Paris, article ccxcii. ^ Ibid, articles xiii-xiv. 
 
 * Ibid, articles xv-xvi.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 83 
 
 children, the daughters divided the whole seigniory equally 
 among themselves, without any distinction as to priority of 
 birth ; ^ (4) when there were no direct heirs, the estate went 
 to collaterals, but male and female collaterals did not share 
 equally.^ 
 
 Lands held en cerisive, on the other hand, were partible among 
 the heirs without any preference of older to younger or of male 
 to female. All direct heirs took share and share aHke ; in the 
 absence of direct heirs, all collaterals shared equally.^ Lands 
 held en franc aleic noble followed the same rules as lands en 
 seigneur ie, lands held en franc aleu rotnrier the same as lands 
 en censive.^ 
 
 The effects of this system of succession soon began to show 
 themselves. Each participant in an inheritance manifested a 
 desire to have his share front on the river, with the result that 
 at each partition the frontage was narrowed, the depth of each 
 plot remaining as it was in the original grant. In the case of 
 the seigniories the evil was not so great, for in most instances 
 the river frontage had been liberal at the outset; but in the 
 case of e7i censive holdings equal division of the land be- 
 tween all the heirs of a holder soon reduced the frontage to 
 such a narrow margin that the plots assumed a ludicrous shape. 
 The holdings became mere ribbons of land, in some extreme 
 cases with a frontage of less than two hundred feet and a 
 depth of more than a mile. The evil was not, as in France, 
 that of morcellement, for in point of superficial area the habit- 
 ant often continued to be well provided with land ; but the 
 abnormal shape of his holding seriously lessened its value. As 
 his house and barns were usually located at the front of his 
 tract, the processes of agriculture necessitated considerable 
 travelling back and forth on the part of those who worked 
 the land, a necessity which too often resulted in the practice 
 
 ^ Coutume de Par.is, article xix. ^ /^^v/, article xxv. ^ Ibid, article cccii. 
 
 * Ibid, article Ixviii. These various articles may be conveniently found in Sequel 
 of the Abstract of those Parts of the Custom of the Viscounty and Provostship of Paj-is, 
 which were received and practised in the Province of Quebec in the time of the French 
 Government (1772). See also Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Generate du Droit Civil 
 Canadien, 87 ff; and Report of the Solicitor-General, 1790, Titles and Documents 
 i- 31-33-
 
 84 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 of tilling the front of the farm and letting the rear grow wild. 
 In more ways than one the peculiar configuration of the farms 
 seems to have militated against rotation of crops, and to have 
 hindered agricultural improvements in general. Furthermore, 
 the fact that the children participated equally in inheritance to 
 en censive lands offered a temptation for them to remain at 
 home even after it had become apparent that their shares 
 would be too small to support them properly ; and the situa- 
 tion was aggravated by the prevalence of very large families, 
 a feature which has characterized the social development of 
 the Norman race in the New World from its first establishment 
 to the present day. 
 
 In the autumn of 1744 the governor and intendant, in a long 
 report to the French minister, complained of the bad effects 
 which were beginning to attend this continued subdivision of 
 farms, an evil to which, among other drawbacks, they attributed 
 in considerable degree the small harvests of 1743 and 1744.-^ 
 To this appeal the king promptly responded in the following 
 year with an ordinance relating to the practice. This document, 
 after declaring the royal opinion that the principal hindrance 
 to agricultural progress in New France was the ill-advised 
 endeavor of a large part of the habitants to eke out a living 
 from farms of too small area, ordered that no habitant should 
 thenceforth build his house and barn on any piece of land less 
 than one and one-half lineal arpents in front by thirty to forty 
 arpents in depth. ^ That the authorities were in earnest in en- 
 forcing this ordinance is shown by the fact that four years later 
 the intendant Bigot decreed the demolition of certain houses 
 which had been erected by the habitants of the seigniory of 
 L'Ange-Gardien upon pieces of land the areas of which were 
 shown to be less than that prescribed in the royal order.^ 
 
 It seems somewhat strange that, in a colony where land was so 
 abundant and where grants could be freely had on such favorable 
 terms, the authorities should have found it necessary to inter- 
 vene in this rather harsh fashion. Although clearings were made 
 
 1 Beauharnois and Hocquart to Minister, October 12, 1744, Correspondance Gene- 
 rahs Ixxxi. 35 ff. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 5S5-5S6. ^ Ibid. ii. 400.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 85 
 
 slowly, at no time during the French era was the population of 
 the colony large in proportion to the amount of land actually 
 granted. It has been estimated that in 1760 the average land- 
 holding, cleared and uncleared, per family was not less than one 
 thousand superficial arpents ; ^ and none of this, it must be re- 
 membered, could be permanently held for speculative purposes, 
 for the authorities stood ready to see to it that habitants obtained 
 on very reasonable terms all the land that they could properly 
 cultivate. It may be added that the evils of which the officials 
 complained in 1744 have not been eradicated in French Canada 
 even at the present day. 
 
 The obligations imposed by the seigniors upon holders of en 
 censive grants were determined fundamentally by the Custom of 
 Paris ; but the provisions of this custom might be, and frequently 
 were, altered by decrees and ordinances. Though the obliga- 
 tions were numerous, they may be grouped into three categories : 
 those which were remunerative or were a source of profit to the 
 seignior ; those connected with the administration of seigniorial 
 justice, which might or might not prove remunerative ; and those 
 which were of a purely honorary or ceremonial character. 
 
 First in logical order among the remunerative obligations 
 imposed by the seignior upon his habitants was that of paying 
 the annual cens et rentes. This payment, though ordinarily re- 
 garded as forming a single due, may be separated into two parts, 
 each of which had a different origin and nature. The cens has 
 been defined by a leading commentator on the Custom of Paris 
 as " a moderate annual tax imposed in recognition of the seign- 
 ior's direct authority ";^ and it is true that in New France the 
 cens was usually regarded as a merely nominal payment, valu- 
 able not in itself but as establishing the seignior's legal right to 
 other and more important dues and services. 
 
 As to the origin of the cens there is much difference of 
 opinion among writers on the seigniorial system in France. 
 
 1 Tache, A Plan for the Commutation of the Seigniorial Tenure, Appendix. In 
 I739> when the last complete census of the French period was taken, the area of 
 cleared lands was 180,768 arpents, and the population 37,716, — or five arpents of 
 cleared land per capita {Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871, p. 57 ; also below, p. 237). 
 
 '■^ See Dumoulin, Coutumes de la Prevdtc et Vicomte de Paris (1681), under 
 " Cens."
 
 86 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 Herv^ believes that the payment was not, in its origin, a merely- 
 nominal due, but that it was a real rental {redevance\ entailing 
 a burden upon the censitaire and resulting in substantial profit 
 to the seignior. He claims, however, that through successive 
 depreciations in the value of French currency, it came to be 
 merely nominal in amount. " At the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century," says he, " the silver mark, which is of fixed weight, 
 was worth three livres ; to-day [1786] it is worth fifty-four livres, 
 thus showing an eighteenfold depreciation of the latter." He 
 calculates that one sol of cens in 1350 would correspond in 
 burden to nearly two livres in the currency of the latter part of 
 the eighteenth century ; for, since the rate of cens was fixed in 
 sols per superficial arpent, — that is, in fractions of the livre, — 
 a cheapening of the livre meant a diminution in the burden of 
 the cens. In other words, he estimates that a censitaire who in 
 the eighteenth century was paying only one or two sols per 
 arpent was rendering to his seignior what would have been a 
 rental of very substantial amount four or five centuries before.^ 
 This explanation, though bearing the air of plausibility, is 
 open to some important objections. During the interval be- 
 tween the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries there was no 
 doubt a great depreciation in the value of the livre, and conse- 
 quently of its fractions the sol and the denier, in terms of which 
 the rate of cens per arpent was fixed ; but this depreciation 
 seems to have been neither so regular nor so exact as Herve 
 infers. Great changes in value took place even within a single 
 century. In some years of the fourteenth century, for instance, 
 the depreciation of the livre (in terms of the silver mark) was 
 greater than at any time in the seventeenth.^ 
 
 ^ Herve, Theorie des Matures Feodales et Censuelles, v. I09-IIO. 
 2 The variations in the value of the silver mark in terms of the livre and its frac- 
 tions, by centuries, seem to have been as follows : — 
 
 1 200-1 300, from 40 sols to 3 livres, 15 sols. 
 
 1300-1400, from 2 livres, 4 sols 
 
 1400-1500, from 6 livres, 5 sols 
 1 500-1 600, from II livres 
 1600-1675, from 20 livres 
 
 to 102 livres. 
 
 to 26 livres. 
 
 to 19 livres. 
 
 to 33 livres, 16 sols. 
 
 This table is compiled from I.e Blanc's Trait'e Historique des Monnoyes de France 
 ^Amsterdam, 1692). The fluctuations in the value of money during the period in-
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 8/ 
 
 Quite another explanation of the low rate at which the cens 
 was fixed is that given by Henrion de Pansey, who maintains 
 that the cens was from the very first not a source of emolument 
 to the seignior and not intended to be such, but that on the 
 contrary it was imposed as a badge of ignoble tenure. It grew, 
 he claims, out of the principle expressed in the feudal maxim 
 Nulle terre sajis seigneur, and was exacted as a symbol of seign- 
 iorial dominance.^ In confirmation of his view he cites various 
 royal arrets providing that, if no payment of the cens had been 
 stipulated for by the seignior, or if the payment had been inter- 
 rupted, the seignior must forthwith create or revive it in order to 
 hold valid his other seigniorial rights ; and in creating or reviving 
 the payment, he was, according to the terms of these arrets, to 
 accept the rates current in the neighboring seigniories.^ 
 
 In France, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
 there was of course no uniform rate of cens. The rate varied in 
 different jurisdictions, but it was never high enough to form a real 
 burden. The rate per arpent was ordinarily fixed by the terms 
 of the original grant eji censive ; when it had not been specified 
 on that occasion, the rate payable was that which happened to 
 be current in the neighborhood.^ It must be understood, however, 
 that in France the seignior was nowhere compelled to subgrant 
 his lands; nor was he, when he chose to subgrant, bound to do 
 so at the rate current in the vicinity. He was under obligation 
 to accept this current rate only when a stipulation of the precise 
 rate had not been made in the original title-deed. In Canada, 
 
 tervening between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries are also discussed in Avenel, 
 Histoire Economique de ia Propricte, des Salaires, des Denrees, et de tousles Prix en 
 general depuis Pan 1200 jusqi£ en Pan 1800 (4 vols., Paris, 1894-1898). 
 
 1 This seems to have been the view taken by the colonial authorities : " Une 
 redevance si modique, qui est plutot donnee in recognitionetn domini et pour la 
 ninrque de la directe seigneurie, que pour faire un revenu de quelque consideration 
 au seigneur" (^Edits el Ordonnances, ii. 489). 
 
 ^ Henrion de Pansey, Dissertations Feodales, i. 269, 295. 
 
 ' " As regards the amount of the cens, it is regulated by the titles if such there be ; 
 and where there is no title fixing the amount, custom, that is to say the amount most 
 ordinary in the same place, governs it ; it is in this last case a sure and decisive 
 guide" (Lafontaine, Observations, 166, citing Bourjon, Le Droit Coinmun de la 
 France et la Cotttume de Paris redicits en Principes, i. 266). See also the references 
 given by Lafontaine to many other authorities.
 
 88 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 on the contrary, owing to the persistent royal intervention in the 
 interest of colonial progress, the fixing of the rate of cejis was 
 not permanently left to the discretion of the seignior ; for early 
 in the eighteenth century he was placed under obligation to 
 subgrant lands to settlers at the rate customary in the neighbor- 
 hood, without having any legal right to demand a higher 
 rate.^ 
 
 In the charters granted to the Marquis de la Roche in 1598, 
 to the Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, and to the 
 Company of the West Indies in 1664, no stipulation was made 
 as to the exact terms upon which lands in the colony should be 
 granted; each charter gave to the recipients power to grant 
 upon such terms as might seem advisable to them.^ Nor did 
 any of the royal arrets down to the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century make any reference, direct or indirect, to the existence 
 of any uniform rate of cens. Consequently the matter was regu- 
 lated by the "common law" of the colony, which was the Custom 
 of Paris : the colonial seigniors, like those at home, stipulated 
 with their censitaires for such rate of cens as they were able to 
 obtain, and, when no title-deed was drawn up, collected such rate 
 as was customary in the neighborhood. In the early days of 
 the colony down to the close of the seventeenth century, settlers 
 came in so slowly that there were not many applications each year 
 for en censive grants; hence the seigniors, in their desire to obtain 
 settlers on their lands, were willing to subgrant at a very low rate 
 of cens. Toward the end of seventeenth century, however, when 
 the despatch of large numbers of colonists under state auspices 
 caused the appUcations for land grants to become more numer- 
 ous, the seigniors began to demand more rent ; so that incoming 
 settlers found themselves unable to get locations except on 
 promising to pay a rate of cens very much higher than that paid 
 by habitants already on the seigniorial lands. In a word, the 
 seigniors, very much to the detriment of what the authorities con- 
 ceived to be the best interest of the colony, — namely, facihty of 
 settlement upon the land, — began to abuse their right to stipu- 
 late at their own discretion for any amount of cens. 
 
 1 See below, p. 89. 2 cf, above, ch. ii.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 89 
 
 It was for this reason that the governor and intendant from 
 time to time asked the king to curb the power of the seigniors in 
 this particular. In 1707, Raudot addressed Pontchartrain very 
 vigorously on the point, asking that an arret be issued limiting 
 the cens to the uniform rate of "one sou for each arpent in front 
 or twenty sous for the whole grant, at the option of the grantee 
 ... in order to prevent the seigniors from imposing vexatious 
 conditions." ^ To this despatch the minister replied, expressing 
 the opinion that "it would be very desirable to reduce the seign- 
 iorial dues throughout the whole of Canada to the same level," 
 but asking for further information as to the rates imposed in 
 various parts of the colony.^ To this request the intendant re- 
 sponded in the course of the same year, enclosing a memorandum 
 showing the amount of dues exacted in different seigniories, and 
 commenting upon the marked increase in the rates during the 
 last few decades over those stipulated for "in innocent times 
 when the seigniors did not so much seek their own advantage."^ 
 
 The home government, however, took no decisive action till 
 171 1. In the first Arret of Marly, promulgated in that year, ex- 
 plicit provision was made to the effect that no seignior should 
 henceforth exact from an applicant for lands a higher rate of 
 dues than that which was customary in the vicinity. If the 
 seignior should demand more, the arret gave the governor and 
 intendant power to step in and make the desired grant at the 
 customary rate, the dues thereafter to become payable to the 
 crown and not to the avaricious seignior.* At first glance, it 
 might be thought that this provision of the Arret of Marly 
 would have effected what Raudot desired, namely, a uniform 
 rate of cens throughout the colony; in fact, some writers of 
 prominence and authority have expressed the opinion that a uni- 
 
 1 Raudot to Pontchartrain, November 10, 1707, Correspondance Getter ale, xxvi. 
 
 7-34. 
 
 * Pontchartrain to Raudot, June 13, 1708, Correspondence between the French 
 Government and the Governors and Intendants of Canada relative to the Seigniorial 
 Tenure (1853), 9 ff. 
 
 8 Raudot to Pontchartrain, October 18, 1708, Correspondance Generale,iix\\\\. 175- 
 187. The memorandum referred to as accompanying this despatch has, unfortu- 
 nately, not been preserved. 
 
 * Edits et Ordonnances, i. 325.
 
 90 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 form rate was actually established by this royal decree. Cugnet 
 speaks of the cens as having been definitely fixed at "one sol 
 for each arpent in front by forty in depth," ^ Solicitor-Gen- 
 eral WiUiams, in his report on the nature and legal bases of 
 seigniorial rights, made in 1790, declared that the rate was fixed 
 at "one half-penny for every acre in front by forty in depth, "^ 
 Judge Hay decided that it was fixed at "one penny for every 
 superficial arpent";^ and two of the judges of the Special Court 
 established in 1854 to determine the rights of seigniors to com- 
 pensation for the loss of their privileges, expressed the opinion 
 that the arret of 171 1 intended to make the rate of cens uniform 
 throughout the colony.^ 
 
 Color appears to be lent to this view, furthermore, by the 
 wording of an intendant's ordinance issued in 1737. In that 
 year Hocquart received from certain, habitants of the seigniory 
 of Gaudarville a petition setting forth " that the Dame Peuvret, 
 seignioress of that place, had made some five grants en censive 
 without having fixed the amount of dues for which the habitants 
 should be held liable," and requesting that she be ordered to 
 grant them titles in good form, " and this on the footing of the 
 deeds of concession of other lands in the same seigniory." The 
 intendant having, as he declares, " inspected the deeds of two 
 other habitants of the same seigniory," ordered that " the peti- 
 tioners be granted deeds of concession by Dame Peuvret . . . 
 subject to the rate of cens ordered by His Majesty, namely, one 
 sol of cejis for each arpent in front." ^ 
 
 This ordinance would at first sight seem to indicate that, in 
 the opinion of the intendant, the arret of 171 1 had established 
 a definite rate of ce?is ; but a closer examination will disclose 
 that it does not necessarily imply this. It should be noted that 
 the intendant first inspected the deeds of other habitants in the 
 
 ^ Cugnet, Traite de la Loi des Fiefs, 44. 
 
 ^ This report may be found in full in Titles and Doctiments, i. 27 ff. 
 
 ^ Unpublished manuscript entitled " Government and Justice in Canada," now in 
 the library of the Provincial Parliament at Quebec. 
 
 * These were Judges Smith and Mondelet. See Proceedings of the Special Seign- 
 iorial Court (1856), 61 ; also Judge Smith's Observations, 50, and Judge Monde- 
 let's Observations, 5. 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii, 545.
 
 THE SElGJStlOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 91 
 
 seigniory. Why should he have done this if a uniform rate had 
 been definitely fixed for all grants ? Was it not that Hocquart 
 wished to find out what was the customary rate of cejis in the 
 seigniory of Gaudarville, and upon this basis to determine the rate 
 which the dame seignioress, having failed to make stipulation in 
 the original grants, might now exact ? In other words, may not 
 the words of the intendant's ordinance be fairly construed to 
 read, " to the rate fixed by the king, [which in this case appears 
 from deeds of other habitants of the seigniory to be] one sol per 
 arpent " ? 
 
 Support is given to this view by the fact that the words " to 
 the rate ordered by His Majesty " do not appear in any other of 
 the numerous ordinances which commanded seigniors to grant 
 title-deeds to habitants at the customary rate, and that no other 
 official document refers to the rate as having been uniformly fixed 
 at one sol per arpent. As a matter of fact, the purpose of the 
 Arret of Marly was to keep the seigniors from stipulating for 
 an unfair rate to the detriment of colonial development, an end 
 which did not, however, necessitate the reduction of all dues to 
 the same level. The royal intention, as seen from the wording 
 of certain ratifications of grants made subsequently to 171 1, 
 appears to have been to allow the rate to be fixed by the seign- 
 ior in accordance with the quality and situation of the grant,^ but 
 at the same time to prevent any abuse of this discretionary power. 
 It seems scarcely possible that the king should have expected 
 or desired seigniors to subgrant all lands, good, bad, and indif- 
 ferent, at the same rate. 
 
 If it was the intention of the crown to establish a uniform 
 Tate of cens for the whole colony by the arret of 171 1, it may 
 fairly be assumed that in those grants which were made by 
 the crown directly, without the intervention of a seignior, a 
 uniform rate would have been prescribed ; but an examination 
 of the title-deeds of the en censive grdiwts thus made after 171 1 
 shows nothing of the kind. Take, for example, the title-deeds 
 of three en censive grants made by the crown during the years 
 1 750-1 75 3, all three of them grants of land near the present 
 
 ^ " En egard a la qualite et situation des heritages au temps des concessions " 
 iJBrevets de Ratification, 9),
 
 92 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 site of Detroit.^ If we might fairly expect to find uniformity 
 anywhere, it would be in the case of grants made by the same 
 authorities at about the same time and in the same locality ; but 
 as a matter of fact the rate of cens provided for in these three 
 deeds varied considerably. It might furthermore be expected 
 that, if the crown intended that the seigniors should exact a 
 fixed rate of cens, it would have so stipulated in the title-deeds 
 of seigniories granted after 171 1 ; but out of the scores of such 
 deeds executed by the governors and intendants from 171 1 to 
 1759 there seem to be only four in which the rate of cens which 
 might be exacted by the grantees is definitely fixed, and in each 
 of these four the rate allowed is a different one.^ It may, 
 then, be fairly concluded that the amount of the ceiis was never 
 regulated by any uniform rule for the whole colony. 
 
 When the colonial currency became depreciated, disputes 
 arose between seigniors and habitants as to whether the ceiis 
 should be paid in colonial money {monnaies de cartes^ or in 
 French ( monnaie de France ). The seigniors, naturally enough, 
 wished to be paid in the latter, the habitants to pay in the 
 former; but an end was promptly put to their disputes by 
 the issue, in 171 7, of a royal edict providing that, unless it 
 had been otherwise stipulated in their title-deeds, the habitants 
 should be allowed to pay their dues in French currency with 
 a deduction of one-fourth.^ This peculiar arrangement is ex- 
 plained by the fact that at this time colonial currency was 
 circulating at about three-fourths of its face value.* The 
 edict of 1 71 7 is not to be understood as giving the habitant 
 the option of paying the full rate in colonial currency or 
 three-fourths of the rate in French currency. That, to be 
 
 1 One to Pierre Reaume, April i, 1750, and two to Douville Dequindre, June 12, 
 1752, and May 16, 1753. See Titres des Seigneuries, 249, 251-252. 
 
 2 For copies of these four deeds, see Ibid. 59, 64, 84, 131. In all the others the 
 obligation, when it appears at all, is that grants shall be made " at the customary 
 rate." 
 
 3 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 372, § ix ; cf. also Ibid. 393, 525. On the enforcement of 
 the stipulations contained in the deeds, see Dupuy's elaborate ordinance in the case 
 of the habitants of Bellechasse, Ibid. 486-494. 
 
 ^The best outline of the history of currency and exchange during this period is 
 Adam Shortt's Canadian Currency and Exchange under French Rule, in Journal of 
 the Canadian Bankers' Association, v. 271, 385, vi. I, 147, 233 (1898-1899).
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 93 
 
 sure, is what the arrangement practically amounted to at the 
 time the edict was issued ; but, as the colonial currency further 
 depreciated, the habitants, when they tendered this money, were 
 required to pay considerably more than the sum specified in 
 their deeds. This was particularly true of the closing years of 
 the French epoch, when the colony was flooded with inconvertible 
 paper money.-^ 
 
 The other part of this payment, the rentes, was payable 
 sometimes in kind, sometimes in both money and kind, and 
 sometimes entirely in money. In many cases the amount was 
 fixed in terms of both produce and money, — as, for example, 
 for each superficial arpent " twenty sols or one fat capon," or 
 " twenty sols or one demi-minot of grain. " ^ The amount of 
 the rcjites, like that of the cens, was fixed by the seignior 
 at the time the grant was made, otherwise the rate cus- 
 tomary in the neighborhood obtained; and, as in case of 
 the cens, the amount stipulated varied in different seigniories, 
 and even in the same seigniory at different periods. The 
 rentes was no nominal due, but a real burden on the habitant 
 and a tangible source of profit to the seignior. When its 
 amount was fixed in terms of poultry or grain alone, the 
 burden varied with variations in the value of these. The 
 value of the " fat capon," for instance, rose and fell from year 
 to year. In a deed granting lands within the seigniory of 
 Gaudarville in 1708, it is given as twenty sols,^ while in the 
 title of a grant within the seigniory of Isles Bouchard in 1709 
 it is given as thirty sols.* The fluctuations in the price of wheat 
 were also marked, extending, during the last thirty years of 
 French rule, all the way from two to ten livres per minot, 
 as may be seen from the appended table.^ 
 
 ^ Stevenson, The Card Money of Canada, in Quebec Literary and Historical So- 
 ciety, Transactions, 1873-1875, pp. 84-112. See also hzTean, A/onnaie de Cartes 
 ail Canada, in Revue de Montreal, ii. 433-438 ; and Dionne, La Monnaie Cana- 
 dienne sous le Hegime Fran^ais^ in Revtie Canadienne, xxix. 30-32, 72-83. 
 
 ^ A minot was the equivalent of 39 litres, or 1.072 English bushels. 
 
 ' Cited in Lafontaine, Observations, 178. 
 
 * Ibid. 190. 
 
 ^ This table is compiled by the Rev. M. Comte, and printed in Titles and Docu- 
 ments, i. 177,
 
 94 
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 Year 
 
 LlVRES 
 
 Sols 
 
 Year 
 
 LiVRES 
 
 Sols 
 
 1729 
 
 3 
 
 
 1745 
 
 3 
 
 
 1730 
 
 3 
 
 
 1746 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 1731 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 1747 
 
 3 
 
 
 1732 
 
 3 
 
 
 1748 
 
 3 
 
 
 1733 
 
 2 
 
 
 1749 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 1734 
 
 2 
 
 
 1750 
 
 3 
 
 
 1735 
 
 2 
 
 
 1751 
 
 5 
 
 
 1736 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 1752 
 
 4 
 
 
 1737 
 
 4 
 
 
 1753 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 1738 
 
 3 
 
 
 1754 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 1739 
 
 2 
 
 
 1755 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 1740 
 
 2 
 
 
 1756 
 
 5 
 
 
 1 741 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 1757 
 
 10 
 
 
 1742 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 1758^ 
 1759 1- 
 
 
 1743 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 Figures not obtainable. 
 
 1744 
 
 4 
 
 2I 
 
 1760 J 
 
 
 In drawing up the deeds, many of the seigniors took care to 
 stipulate strictly as to the quality of produce which might be 
 tendered in payment of the rentes; thus, one will find the pay- 
 ments fixed at "one good fat capon of the brood of the month 
 of May for each arpent," or at " one minot of good sound mer- 
 chantable wheat." When the rate of rentes was fixed both in 
 produce and in money, the seignior usually stipulated that the 
 option of payment in one or the other form should rest with 
 him and not with the grantee ; if he omitted to do so, the habit- 
 ants appear to have made it a point to tender their rentes in 
 grain or fowl when prices were low and in money when prices 
 were high. The authorities, however, seem to have felt that even 
 in the absence of explicit stipulation the choice as to the form 
 of payment rested with the seignior, a fact of which Raudot com- 
 plained, in 1707, on the ground that it made the burden upon 
 the habitants unduly heavy. "These dues," he wrote, " are paid 
 to the seignior either in kind or in cash at the seignior's choice. 
 The capons are valued at thirty sols, whereas they are not really 
 worth more than ten. The seigniors often compel the habitants 
 to give them money at great inconvenience, for the latter fre- 
 quently have no money to give. Thirty sols may seem a mere
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 95 
 
 trifle, but it is very considerable in a colony where money is so 
 scarce. It seems to me that when there is a choice of payment 
 it should be in favor of the party owing, cash being a sort of 
 penalty against him when he is unable to pay in kind."^ When, 
 however, the habitants appealed to the authorities at Quebec to 
 be allowed to choose the form of payment, the latter invariably 
 upheld the seignior's contention, and finally, in 1730, decreed 
 by ordinance the enforcement of the general principle that the 
 choice should always rest with the seignior unless the title-deed 
 of the habitant expressly stated the contrary.^ 
 
 Payment of the cens et rentes took place once a year, and 
 usually late in the fall. " Every autumn," writes Casgrain, "as 
 Michaelmas (November 11) approached, the seignior warned 
 his habitants at the church door after mass that their cens et 
 rentes was payable. As soon as the winter roads were good 
 the manor-house became the centre of as lively activity as is 
 the presbyth-e to-day when the habitants assemble to pay their 
 tithes. Some arrived in carioles, some in sleighs, each bringing 
 with him a capon or two, oats by the bushel, or other products 
 of his lands." ^ The occasion was a gala day for the seigniory. 
 There appears to have been "a prodigious consumption of 
 tobacco and a corresponding retail of neighborhood gossip, 
 joined to the outcries of the captive fowls, bundled together 
 with legs securely tied but with throats at full liberty."* When, 
 as occasionally happened, the seignior did not reside on his 
 seigniory, he was obliged to keep an agent on the ground to 
 receive the payments at the time and place appointed in the 
 deeds of the habitants. An intendant's ordinance, issued in 1714, 
 makes it clear that the habitants could not be called upon to 
 make payments of the cetis et rentes except on the exact day and 
 at the particular place specified in their title-deeds.^ 
 
 The second financial obligation under which lands en censive 
 were held was that of the payment of a mutation fine, known as 
 
 ^ Raudot to Pontchartrain, November 10, 1707, Correspondance Generale,-xxy\. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 512. 
 
 ^ H. R. Casgrain, line Paroisse Canadienne au xyW^ Steele, 173. 
 
 * Parkman, T/ie Old Regime in Canada, ii. 47. 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 440.
 
 96 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 the lods et ventes, which became due and payable upon the 
 occasion of each mutation in ownership of the lands, whether 
 by sale, gift, or inheritance other than in direct descent.^ In 
 France the amount ^of the lods et ventes varied somewhat in 
 different provinces, amounting sometimes to from one-fourth 
 to one-sixth of the mutation price.^ In Canada, on the other 
 hand, the amount uniformly exacted was that fixed by the Cus- 
 tom of Paris, namely, one-twelfth, of which the seignior usually 
 remitted one-third, although he was under no legal obligation to 
 do 80.^ A judgment of the Superior Council in 1677, for in- 
 stance, ordered certain habitants of the seigniory of Gaudarville 
 to pay the full twelfth without rebate, despite the fact that, as 
 the habitants alleged, " a remission of one-third was made by all 
 the seigniors of the country." * 
 
 The lods et ventes was payable in cash at the seigniorial 
 manor-house within forty days of the date of mutation. In 
 default of payment, the seignior might obtain from the intendant 
 a judgment giving him the right to seize the grain or other per- 
 sonal property of the dehnquent habitant ; or, if there were not 
 sufficient property to distrain, he might obtain a judgment re- 
 uniting the land to the seigniorial domain.^ At the time of making 
 payment, the new owner of the en censive lands exhibited his title 
 and rendered his fealty and homage to the seignior. 
 
 Ordinarily the lods et ventes could not be collected on the ex- 
 change of inheritances between direct heirs any more than on 
 direct inheritances ; but by an edict issued in 1673 the king 
 made provision that this exemption should not apply to those 
 en censive lands which had been granted directly by the crown ; * 
 and some time later the Seminary of St. Sulpice, which possessed 
 the seigniory of the island of Montreal, was given the same 
 
 1 Couturne de Paris, article Ixxiii. 
 
 2 Taine, VAncien Pigime, 536. 
 
 ^ Report of the Commissioners, 1843, Titles and Documents, i. 51. Solicitor- 
 General Williams, in his report of 1 790, states that " a fourth of the fine was usually 
 remitted by the seignior" (^Ibid. 30) ; but this is probably an error. 
 
 * Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 75-76. 
 
 6 Ibid. 64, 341. 
 
 ^ This edict does not seem to have been printed. It is cited in the report of 
 Solicitor-General Williams, mentioned above.
 
 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 97 
 
 privilege as the crown, by way of compensation for relinquish- 
 ing its judicial privileges within the seigniory. ^ 
 
 In the earlier period of the French regime the seigniorial 
 profits accruing from the payment of the lods et ventes were 
 not large, for lands en censive changed hands, except by inherit- 
 ance in direct succession, very infrequently ; but in the later 
 years of French dominion the increase of colonial population 
 made transfers of land, especially in the vicinity of the settle- 
 ments, much more frequent, and the seigniorial profits became, 
 in consequence, very considerable. Still, the payment does not 
 seem seriously to have hampered the normal course of land 
 transfers until after the conquest, when it became one of the 
 generally accepted evil incidents of the seigniorial system, by 
 operating, especially in the case of valuable lands, as an 
 unwholesome check on the free alienation of real property. 
 
 As the seigniorial system developed, it became a common 
 practice to attempt to deprive the seignior of his proper lods 
 et ventes by concealing from him the actual transfer price and 
 tendering him one-twelfth of an alleged mutation price, which 
 was, in each case, fixed much below the actual. According to 
 the Custom of Paris, the dominant seignior had the right, in 
 case of mutation in the ownership of seigniories, to protect him- 
 self against being defrauded out of his proper quint by exercis- 
 ing his dj'oit de retrait feodal {jns retractuni)^ which gave him 
 the privilege of buying a sub-seigniory at the alleged price any 
 time within forty days from his receipt of notice of sale. The 
 custom, however, provided no means whereby the seignior might 
 protect himself from being defrauded of his lods et ventes. By 
 some of the other French customs, seigniors were allowed to 
 exercise the droit de retrait over transfers of land within thfeir 
 seigniories ; and it would seem that in Canada they began at 
 an early date to stipulate, in the deeds which they granted to 
 their habitants, for the recognition of this right. Raudot, in his 
 despatch of November 10, 1707, complains that the colonial 
 seigniors " have even introduced in nearly all their deeds a 
 retrait rotnrier [or right to preempt lands en rotnre'], of which 
 no mention is made in the Custom of Paris, — although that is 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 342-346. * Coutume de Paris, article xx.
 
 98 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 the custom observed in this country, — by stipulating that the 
 seignior, at each sale, may withdraw the lands which he grants 
 at the same price as that at which they would be sold ; and 
 they have thus abused the right of feudal preemption {retrait 
 feodal) spoken of in that custom, and which is sometimes in- 
 serted in grants en fief . . . but is not established as between 
 seignior and habitant. This claim, My Lord," he concludes, 
 " shackles very injuriously all sales of land." Raudot finished 
 by recommending that a royal decree be issued forbidding the 
 seigniors to stipulate for this right.^ 
 
 In reply to this recommendation, Pontchartrain agreed that, 
 since the Custom of Paris had been adopted as the general rule 
 of seigniorial rights in the colony, the exercise of any droit de 
 retrait roturier could not be permitted ; and he said further that 
 even the droit de retrait feodal should not be insisted upon by 
 the crown unless special stipulation therefor had been made in 
 the title-deeds of the seigniories.^ This reply only complicated 
 matters : for, according to Pontchartrain, the seigniors were not 
 to exercise the right with reference to the lands of their habit- 
 ants, even when they had stipulated for it in the title-deeds 
 granted by them, because it was not recognized by the Cus- 
 tom of Paris ; while, on the other hand, the representatives of 
 the crown were not to exercise the right in reference to the 
 seigniories unless they had expressly stipulated for it in the 
 deeds, although this right was permitted by the custom. 
 
 The intendant did not, of course, wish the policy of suppres- 
 sion to be carried so far ; he wanted to have the seigniors 
 curbed in their rights without being freed from one of the 
 checks which the authorities had upon them. He therefore 
 communicated again with the minister on the subject, pointing 
 out that the right of retrait fe'odal was a very serviceable one 
 in several ways. Even if it did hinder the transfer of seign- 
 iorial lands, it was, he claimed, not an evil, since it was well 
 that the " ownership of seigniories should be perpetuated in the 
 
 ^ Raudot to Pontchartrain, November lO, 1707, Correspondance Generate, xx^n. 
 
 7ff- 
 
 - Pontchartrain to Raudot, June 13, 1 708, Correspondence between the French Gov- 
 ernment and the Governors and Intendants of Canada, etc., 9 ff.
 
 THE SEIGATIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 99 
 
 same families." ^ With this correspondence the matter seems to 
 have dropped, for no edict on the subject followed. In the 
 absence of express prohibition, the seigniors made good their 
 claim to exercise the right; and in 17 14 the intendant Begon 
 decided in one of his judgments that they were justified in so 
 doing. ^ 
 
 One writer on the subject of land tenure in Lower Canada 
 has remarked that the existence of the droit de retrait was nec- 
 essary in order to keep the seignior from being defrauded of 
 his proper amount of ce?is et rentes? There seems to be no 
 ground for this view, for the cens et re7ites was reckoned upon 
 area and was a definite annual due ; it was only the lods et ventes 
 which was reckoned upon the mutation price of the land and 
 hence was liable to variation. In France, where the amount of 
 lods et vetites was high, there was naturally a strong temptation 
 on the part of censitaires to report a fictitious mutation price to 
 the seignior ; but in Canada, where it amounted to only one- 
 twelfth of the value, the temptation was much less dangerous. 
 Still, the possibility of fraud existed, and the Canadian seignior 
 clung to the droit de retrait as a protection. It may be worth 
 while to note that something corresponding to this right may 
 be found in almost every land-tenure system in which the peas- 
 ant holder pays a mutation fine to him from whom the land is 
 held, and where this fine is paid upon the value and not upon 
 the extent of the lands.* It seems, therefore, to have been a 
 natural supplement to the payment, and to have come into 
 being as a preventive to fraud. 
 
 Toward the close of the French era, complaints were made 
 that some of the seigniors were asserting their right to purchase 
 not only the lands, but the grain, cattle, and even the personal 
 
 1 Raudot to Pontchartrain, October 18, 1708, Correspondance Generate, xxviii. 
 175-187. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 438. 
 
 ^ Robert Abraham, Some Remarks on the French Tenure of Franc Aleu Roturier, 
 and its relation to the Feudal and other forms of Tenure, 25. 
 
 * M. Emile de Laveleye, in his De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives, 98, 
 notes the existence, among the Arabs in Algeria, of what was substantially the droit 
 de retrait under the name oi cheffa, or chefaa. See also Leroy-Beaulieu, De la Colo- 
 nisation chez les Peuples Modernes (5th ed.), ii, 24-25.
 
 100 THE SEIGNIOR AND HIS DEPENDENTS. 
 
 chattels, of their habitants, whenever the latter had these for 
 sale. In some parts of France this right seems to have been 
 exercisable by the seigniors ; ^ but the Custom of Paris gave no 
 warrant for it, and in Canada it was never sanctioned by the 
 authorities. Many of the Canadian habitants, however, drawn 
 as they were from the provinces of Normandy, Perche, and 
 Poitou, knew very little about the provisions of the Custom of 
 Paris, and by their absolute ignorance were often led to submit 
 to seigniorial exactions which were without any legal basis. It 
 not unfrequently happened, indeed, that the habitants in various 
 outlying seignories would submit quietly to the enforcement 
 of unfounded seigniorial claims for many years before making 
 the discovery that they were merely being made to pay the 
 price of their ignorance. From time to time, it is true, the 
 authorities deplored this apparent disposition of the seigniors 
 to take unfair advantage of their unsophisticated dependents ; 
 but they could deal only with cases which came to their notice. 
 
 The cens et rentes and the lods et vejites were the only direct 
 payments made by the habitants to their seigniors ; but there 
 were several other obligations to which the former were subject, 
 some of which came in the course of time to be regarded as little 
 more than direct payments or seigniorial dues. Chief among 
 these were the banalities, or banal rights, of the seigniors, a 
 consideration of the nature and extent of which forms the topic 
 of the next chapter. 
 
 ^ See Glasson, Precis Elementaire de VHistoire du Droit Fran^ais, 476.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 Among the important incidents of the seigniorial system in 
 France were the various rights and privileges known as the 
 droits de banal, banalites, or banal rights. These were the 
 rights of the seignior to control exclusively various public or 
 semi-public services within his seigniory, and to compel his 
 dependents to make use of these at a stipulated toll or charge. 
 In various parts of France the seigniorial banalities included 
 the right to build and operate grist-mills, cork-factories, hemp- 
 factories, saw-mills, bake-ovens, wine-presses, cider-mills, slaugh- 
 ter-houses, and so on ; but the nature and extent of the rights 
 varied very greatly in different provinces. Out of the long 
 list of privileges only two were ever claimed in Canada, the 
 grist-mill and bake-oven banalities; and of these only the former 
 was ever enforced to any extent. 
 
 Whether, in their origin, these banal rights resulted from un- 
 lawful usurpations on the part of the seigniors, or whether they 
 arose naturally from the mutual wants and interests of the 
 parties concerned, has never been very satisfactorily determined. 
 On this point students of the development of seigniorial insti- 
 tutions disagree. 1 According to Henrion de Pansey, however, 
 there were in France but eleven coiitmnes which expressly 
 recognized the banal rights as accruing to a seignior without 
 special contract made with his dependents.^ The other customs 
 either are entirely silent upon the whole subject of banalities, 
 or speak of them only as rights which a seignior might exercise 
 as the result of stipulations made in the original grant of lands 
 within his jurisdiction. Whatever their origin, the exaction of 
 
 1 See M. Rioufol, UOrigine et VHistoirc des Banalites (1893). 
 
 2 Henrion de Pansey, Dissertations Feodaks, i. 175. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVER?^TTY OF CATJFORNIA' 
 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 I02 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 the banal rights was, at the end of the seventeenth century, 
 more or less general throughout a considerable part of France ; 
 in fact, one writer has declared them to have been " the most 
 terrible and the most general abuse " of the whole seigniorial 
 system.^ 
 
 The Custom of Paris recognized the right of the seignior to 
 enforce mill and oven banalities only when he had stipulated to 
 this effect in the title-deeds granted to his dependents, and 
 then only under certain limitations. The articles in the custom 
 that relate to this matter run as follows : (i) "No seignior can 
 compel his dependents to go to the mill or oven which he claims 
 to be banal ... if he have not such right by title . . . and no 
 title is to be reputed valid if it has not been executed more than 
 twenty-five years ; " (2) "A windmill {tnoulin a vent) cannot be 
 a banal mill, nor [when a seignior possesses such only] can 
 neighboring millers be hindered from soliciting grist within the 
 seigniory." 2 
 
 In New France, therefore, after the introduction of the Cus- 
 tom of Paris in 1664,^ the possession by the seignior of the rights 
 of mill and oven banality was not a necessary incident of 
 the ownership of a seigniory, but accrued to him only when he 
 had made the proper stipulations with his habitants. In the 
 title-deeds which he granted his dependents, however, it was 
 the almost invariable practice of the Canadian seignior to insert 
 a clause providing that the grantee should have his grain ground 
 only at the seigniorial mill ; and if no mill had been erected at 
 the time the grant was made, the clause was made to provide 
 that this obligation should go into force whenever a seigniorial 
 mill should be established.* As will be "seen, however, the 
 provisions of the Custom of Paris requiring that a title, to be 
 
 ^ Championniere, De la Propriete des Eaux Courantes (1846), 552. Tocque- 
 ville, in his Old Regime atid the Revolution, 336, mentions that there were no banal 
 rights in the provinces of Artois, Flanders, and Hainault. 
 
 2 Articles Ixxi-lxxii. These articles were not in the Custom of Paris as drawn up 
 in 1 5 10, but were inserted at the time of its revision in 1580. 
 
 3 See above, p. 31. 
 
 * " Que le dit . . . seront tenus de porter leurs grains moudre au moulin banal, 
 lorsqu'il y en aura d'etabli, a peine de confiscation des grains et d'amende arbitraire " 
 {Titres des Seigneuries, 242).
 
 THE BANALITIES. IO3 
 
 accounted valid, must have been executed more than twenty-five 
 years, and providing that no windmill could be deemed a banal 
 mill, were, like some other provisions of the custom, set aside by 
 the king and by the colonial authorities as being unsuited to 
 conditions existing in New France.^ 
 
 The first mention, so far as official writings are concerned, 
 of the existence of banal mills in the colony is to be found 
 in an ordinance of Governor de Lauzon, issued in 1652. This 
 ordinance has not been preserved ; but it is referred to in a 
 decree of the Sovereign Council, which, some fifteen years later 
 (March 28, 1667), reiterated the purport of Lauzon's decree 
 and ordered its enforcement. This later decree,^ after declar- 
 ing that sundry complaints had been made regarding abuses of 
 the banal right by millers, — abuses which were apparently in 
 the form of excessive exactions of toll and the rendering of 
 inferior service, — went on to direct that the provisions made 
 by Lauzon for the protection of the habitants should have 
 their full force and effect. What these provisions were cannot, 
 in the absence of any copy of the earlier decree, be definitely 
 stated; but from some passages in the decree of 1667 it would 
 appear that they had given the habitants the right to claim 
 damages from those seigniors at whose mills their grain was 
 improperly ground or whose millers took excessive toll. One 
 clause of the decree, in fact, provided that seigniors who were 
 mulcted in damages might deduct the amount of the damages 
 from the wages of their millers. 
 
 Other regulations on the subject of the banal right followed 
 quickly, one of them, issued in June, 1667, fixing definitely 
 the amount of toll which might be taken at the seigniorial 
 mills for the grinding of grain. It appears that a petition, 
 signed by a number of seigniors, had been presented to the 
 authorities, in which attention was called to the fact " that 
 the mills of this colony cost double or treble those of France, 
 as well for their construction, maintenance, and repair as for 
 the wages and board of the millers." In consequence of 
 this circumstance, the petitioners declared that they might 
 
 1 Below, pp. 108-109. ' Edits et Ordonnances, ii, 36.
 
 104 ^-^^ BANALITIES. 
 
 very justly ask to have the rate of toll proportioned to the 
 increased expense, — to have it fixed, perhaps, at twice or thrice 
 the rate of toll allowed by the Custom of Paris. They did not, 
 however, ask that this be done ; on the contrary, they declared 
 themselves willing to maintain the mills in operation at the 
 existing rate of toll, but requested that an ordinance be issued 
 sanctioning this customary rate throughout the colony. In 
 compliance with the prayer of this petition, the intendant or- 
 dered that the rate of toll at the seigniorial mills should be 
 one-fourteenth of the grain ground.^ 
 
 The same ordinance contained various other regulations. It 
 empowered officials, for instance, " to go from time to time 
 and from place to place to gauge the measures used in the 
 banal mills and to find out, in general, what is going on"; it 
 provided that, when seigniors had leased their banal mills to 
 private parties, the habitants, " in the event of malversation by 
 the millers," should have recourse against the lessee and not 
 against the seignior ; and finally, in order to guard alike against 
 sharp practices on the part of the millers and unreasonable 
 suspicions on the part of the habitants, it required that "all 
 owners of grain taken to seigniorial mills to be ground shall 
 be held to have their grain weighed in their own presence, 
 in default whereof no subsequent complaints against the mil- 
 ler will be heard." This practice of administrative interference 
 in the management of the banal mills was not peculiar to the 
 colony ; it had long been common in France, where it was 
 justified on grounds of public policy .^ 
 
 Despite the assertion of the seigniors to the effect that they 
 would be satisfied with a toll of one-fourteenth, there seems to 
 have been no dearth of attempts to exact a higher rate from the 
 habitants. In the lengthy code of police regulations issued by 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 39. 
 
 2 On this point Henrion de Pansey remarks : " But above the authority of the 
 seigniors there is an authority of a higher order to which belongs all that can interest 
 public policy, . . . and which has the right to restrict the liberty of each individual 
 for the good of the greatest number. The mills intended to give the first prepara- 
 tion to the chief article of food must necessarily be subject to the inspection of the 
 chief authority, which has, then, the right not alone to control them but to regulate 
 their number" {^Dissertations Feodales,\. 215, cited in Lafontaine, Observations, 2^cj).
 
 THE BANALITIES. 105 
 
 the Superior Council at Quebec in 1676, it was therefore deemed 
 necessary to provide penalties against all millers who caused 
 " more than one-fourteenth to be paid for the toll of grist," and 
 to prohibit millers from competing with one another (yde chas- 
 ser les tins snr les azitres), or from soUciting grist in any way 
 from the habitants of seigniories other than their own.^ 
 
 Owing to the comparative poverty of many of the seigniors, 
 the number of banal mills in the colony increased very slowly 
 during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.^ The 
 establishment of a grist-mill involved considerable expense ; 
 for, with the exception of the millstones, which were quar- 
 ried in the colony, all the machinery and utensils had to be 
 imported from France, and the cost of transportation was 
 very high. Moreover, the amount of toll received was never 
 large enough to make the operation of the mill profitable, unless 
 the seigniory in which it was situated happened to be a popu- 
 lous one ; in most of the seigniories the toll collected did not 
 even sufifice to pay the wages of the miller hired by the seignior 
 to do the grinding. Accordingly, in many seigniories no mills 
 were built, the seigniors allowing their habitants to take their 
 grain wherever they wished. 
 
 In course of time this condition of affairs was brought to the 
 attention of the king,^ with the request that some steps be 
 taken to compel seigniors to provide mills for the use of their 
 dependents even when such mills would be sources of loss 
 rather than of profit; and in prompt response a royal decree 
 was issued along the desired lines. After setting forth the fact 
 that " most of the seigniors who are proprietors of fiefs in New 
 France persistently neglect to erect the mills necessary for the 
 subsistence of the inhabitants of the said country," the decree 
 goes on to declare the necessity of providing some remedy for 
 "an evil so prejudicial to colonial welfare," and to this end it 
 ordains that "all seigniors who are proprietors of fiefs within 
 
 ^ " Reglemens Generaux du Conseil Superieur de Quebec, pour la Police," May 
 II, 1676, Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 6^-73, § xxxv. 
 
 2 The census of 1698 gave the total number of mills in the colony as 43. This 
 included saw-mills as well as grist-mills. See Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871, p. 41. 
 
 ^ MeuUes to Minister, November 12, 1684, Correspondance Generals, vi. 145 ff.
 
 I06 THE BAN'ALITIES, 
 
 the territory of New France shall be bound to erect their banal 
 mills therein within the space of one year after the publication 
 of this decree" ; if they fail to do this, "His Majesty permits 
 all individuals, of whatever condition and rank they may be, to 
 erect such mills, granting them in that respect the full right of 
 mill banality, and prohibiting any person from disturbing them 
 in the right thereof." ^ The tenor of this decree is perfectly 
 clear : if the seignior did not build a mill, any private individual 
 might build one and become possessed of the banal right for all 
 time. 
 
 On October 21, 1686, this decree was duly recorded in the 
 registers of the Superior Council at Quebec, and ordered to be 
 promulgated at the accustomed times and places.^ Strange to 
 say, however, this required publication was not made for some 
 twenty years ; ^ and, outside the immediate circle of colonial offi- 
 cials, no one seems to have known that such a decree ever ema- 
 nated from the king. During the period 1686-1707 matters 
 continued just as they were : the seigniors built their mills or 
 not, as they found it profitable or unprofitable to do so. In the 
 latter case they took good care to insert in the deeds of con- 
 cessions made to dependents the usual obligation on the part of 
 the latter to carry their grain to the seigniorial mill " whenever 
 such shall be erected within the seigniory." 
 
 The reason for the long delay in the publication of the 
 decree of 1686 might easily have been surmised ; but in the 
 despatch transmitted to the French minister by Raudot in 1707 
 it appears very frankly stated. Raudot writes : " I should 
 think, My Lord, that it would be necessary . . . that the 
 exclusive right of grinding should be preserved to the seign- 
 iors on condition of their building mills in their seigniories 
 within a year, failing in which their right should be forfeited, 
 and the habitants would not be obHged, when one was built, to 
 have their grain ground there ; otherwise. My Lord, they will 
 never be induced to build the mills, from the deprivation of 
 which the habitants suffer greatly, being unable, for want of 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 255-256. 
 
 "^ J^gements et Deliberations du Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle- France, iii. 87. 
 
 ^ See the note appended to the copy of the arret in Edits et Ordonnances, i. 256.
 
 THE BANALITIES. 107 
 
 means, to avail themselves of the favor which His Majesty 
 granted them by permitting them to erect mills in cases where 
 the seigniors omitted to do so. . . . This privilege," he con- 
 tinues, " was granted to them in the year 1686 by an arret which 
 was registered by the Superior Council of this country ; but, as 
 it was not sent to the subordinate jurisdictions to be promul- 
 gated, the inhabitants have not hitherto profited by this favor, 
 and it is only since my arrival here that the decree has been 
 pubHshed, the fact of its non-promulgation having but just 
 come to my knowledge in the course of a lawsuit, recently 
 determined, in which the arret was produced, but could not be 
 used to advantage by one of the parties because it had never 
 been promulgated. . . . The fault," he adds, " can only be 
 attributed to the Sieur d'Auteuil, whose duty it is, as attorney- 
 general, to transmit such decrees to the subordinate courts ; but 
 it was his interest as a seignior, as it was that of some of the 
 other councillors who are also seigniors, not to make known 
 this decree." ^ 
 
 In the foregoing despatch we find what was, in all probability, 
 the reason why many of the royal decrees, sent out to the colony 
 and duly enregistered, were never put in force. The members 
 of the Superior Council were, for the most part, owners of seign- 
 iories, and hence sought to negative, in every possible way, any 
 attempt to curtail seigniorial powers. Raudot, however, was a 
 fearless and conscientious ofBcial ; and as soon as the real state 
 of affairs came to his notice, he issued an ordinance commanding 
 the publication of the arret at the subordinate jurisdictions with- 
 out delay.2 From this time on, the seignior was under legal 
 obligation to erect his banal mill within the space of one year 
 from the date of the creation of his seigniory ; if he failed to do 
 so, the right might be claimed by any private individual who 
 chose to provide milHng facilities for the seigniory. 
 
 Within a few months of the promulgation of the long-delayed 
 decree, the intendant found himself called upon to enforce its 
 provisions. During the month of June, 1707, he received a 
 
 * Raudot to Pontchartrain, November 10, 1 707, Correspondance Generale, xxvL 
 7-34. 
 
 2 December 20, 1706, Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 145-150.
 
 I08 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 petition from " all the habitants of the seigniory of Mille Isles," 
 praying that the Sieur Dupre, seignior of that fief, "be 
 ordered to build a mill for them, or, if he will not, to consent 
 that they build one for themselves, and that they be, in conse- 
 quence, discharged from banal obligations, and be allowed to 
 utilize this right to their own profit." The seignior of Mille Isles, 
 being duly summoned before the intendant at Quebec, admitted 
 his inability to proceed with the erection of a mill ; whereupon 
 the intendant issued an ordinance permitting "the said habitants 
 to build a mill in such part of the said seigniory as they deem fit, 
 and by their so doing to be discharged forever from the right 
 of banality." ^ 
 
 In the same month a similar enforcement of the provisions 
 of the royal decree was obtained by the habitants of the seign- 
 iory of Varennes,^ and during the next few years there were 
 several examples of like action. These enforcements seem to 
 have had a wholesome effect upon many seigniors, for a good 
 many mills were erected during the years 1707-1720.^ After 
 Raudot's tenure of the intendancy, however, the enforcement of 
 the decree seems to have been tacitly relaxed ; for it is certain 
 that many seigniors neither built their mills nor were deprived 
 of their rights.* When the habitants could conveniently use 
 the mill of an adjoining seigniory, they resorted to it with the 
 consent of their seignior, who in such cases merely held the 
 banal right in abeyance to be exercised later, when, with the in- 
 creasing population of his seigniory, the erection of a mill would 
 be justified by the expectations of profit. 
 
 It will be remembered that, by the Custom of Paris, no 
 seignior was entitled to exercise the banal right unless he had, 
 in the title-deeds granted to his habitants, expressly stipulated 
 for the exercise of this right. In Canada the seignior, when 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 427. The name Dupre is not a misprint for Dugue, 
 as Lafontaine (^Observations, 317) supposes. Dupre, a merchant of Montreal, is 
 mentioned by Catalogne as owner of the fief in 1712. 
 
 2 Edits et Oi-donnances, iii. 132. 
 
 3 The census of 1720 gives the total number of grist-mills as 90. See Censuses of 
 Canada, 1665-1871, p. 53. 
 
 * In some cases seigniors were, by intendant's ordinance, given an extension of 
 time. Cf. Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 364.
 
 THE BAN-ALITIES. IO9 
 
 he granted titles, seems to have taken good care that this 
 stipulation was inserted. Whether, in the event of his failing 
 so to do, the authorities would have supported him in the 
 exercise of the right is not at all certain ; the question does not 
 seem to have arisen. In a great many cases, however, as 
 has been pointed out, the habitants took lands on the mere 
 word of the seignior, or on the strength of location tickets, 
 which simply stated the fact of the subgrant without naming 
 any of the conditions on which the land was to be held ; and in 
 more than one such case the question arose whether the seign- 
 ior could, in view of the provision in the custom, compel such 
 habitants to bring their grain to the seigniorial mill. On these 
 occasions the intendant ordered the habitants to exchange their 
 location tickets for regular titles, in which the seignior was 
 allowed to insert the banal obligation in its regular form. 
 The wording of several of the ordinances, moreover, seems to 
 lend color to the idea that the colonial authorities regarded the 
 banal right as accruing to the seigniors whenever they built 
 their mills, whether this right had been stipulated for or not ; ^ 
 but the invariable insertion of the stipulation seems to have 
 relieved the officials from the necessity of passing definitely 
 on the point and of determining whether the provision of the 
 custom in this matter should be expressly set aside in the 
 colony. 
 
 The Custom of Paris also provided, it will be remembered, 
 that a windmill could not be deemed banal ; ^ but as early as 1675 
 this technical distinction between windmills and water-mills, so 
 far as it served as a basis for banal claims, was abolished in 
 New France. In July of that year a petition was presented to 
 the Superior Council by one Charles Morin, miller of the seign- 
 iory of Demaure, praying that he might be allowed to grind the 
 grain grown by the habitants of the neighboring seigniory of 
 Dombourg, inasmuch as the mill of the latter was a windmill 
 and consequently could not legally be included within the 
 category of banal mills ; and also praying that the seignior 
 
 ^ See, for example, Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 448-449 ; also Lafontaine, Observa- 
 tions, 292 ff. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 102,
 
 no THE BANALITIES. 
 
 of Dombourg be forbidden to interfere with those of his habit- 
 ants who chose to take their grain to the Demaure mill. The 
 council, having heard the defence of the Dombourg seignior 
 and his miller, and having taken the opinion of the attorney- 
 general on the matter, decided " to dismiss the demand of the 
 said Morin and to order that all mills, whether they be water- 
 mills or windmills (^soit a eaii soit a vent\ v^\{\c\\ the seigniors 
 have built or shall hereafter build in their seigniories, shall be 
 deemed banal mills." Furthermore, the judgment forbade 
 millers to offer inducements to habitants of other seigniories 
 than their own, and provided that a habitant who took grain to 
 any mill other than that of his own seigniory should be liable to 
 have both his grain and the vehicle carrying it confiscated by 
 his own seignior.^ 
 
 The effect of this judgment was completely to set aside one of 
 the important limitations which the Custom of Paris had placed 
 upon the exercise of the banal rights ; indeed, the action of the 
 council was but one of several instances in which the custom 
 was disregarded and its provisions varied to suit the condi- 
 tions existing in the colony. Many of the seigniories did not 
 possess available water power ; and if water-mills alone were to 
 be deemed banal, some of the seigniors would very probably 
 have pleaded the absence of power as an excuse for refusing to 
 proceed with the erection of their mills. In France the peas- 
 antry were not likely to suffer through the non-erection of seign- 
 iorial grist-mills, for, in the absence of these, facilities would be 
 provided by private entrepreneurs ; but in the colony the sparse- 
 ness of the population precluded any hkelihood that private 
 enterprise would undertake to provide flour-mills for the habit- 
 ants. The burden was therefore imposed upon the seigniors, 
 but with a relaxation of the strict provisions of the Custom 
 of Paris in regard to the nature of the mills. Many of 
 the mills, perhaps most of them, were windmills, for the 
 plain reason that in many seigniories no water power was 
 available ; and windmills were discouragingly unreliable. Some- 
 times, for example, men would bring their grain to the wind- 
 mill of the seigniory, and find themselves forced to wait for 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 62-63.
 
 THE BANALITIES. Ill 
 
 days before the wind was strong enough to drive the clumsy 
 wheels. To protect the habitants in this respect, the council 
 provided that, if grain were not ground within forty-eight hours 
 after its arrival at the mill, it might be taken to the water-mill 
 of some neighboring seigniory. ^ 
 
 It is evident, then, that by the early years of the eighteenth 
 century the banal right in Canada had become differentiated in 
 three particulars from that existent in France under the Custom 
 of Paris: (i) the Canadian seignior exercised the right over 
 every holder of en censive lands within his seigniory , — no one 
 was exempt ; (2) any seignior who failed to build a mill within 
 the space of twelve months from the time of receiving his seign- 
 iory was liable, on the petition of any person or persons who 
 chose to provide the service, to lose his banal right; (3) all 
 mills, whether driven by water or by wind power, were capable 
 of being made the basis for the exaction of the banality. 
 
 From time to time regulations designed to reform various 
 abuses connected with the milling system were issued by the 
 intendants, for complaints seem to have been by no means few. 
 In 1 71 5, for example, the bakers of the colony complained 
 lustily that the flour made by the colonial mills was very poor, 
 and that they were frequently cheated by the millers because 
 the latter did not have proper weights and measures ; where- 
 upon the council forthwith issued a code of regulations for the 
 governance of both bakers and millers. By this code, the own- 
 ers of mills were to be " held, under pain of fine, to have scales 
 and weights, duly stamped and marked, wherewith to weigh 
 the wheat which shall be carried to them to be ground as well 
 as to weigh the flour which shall be made therefrom " ; and 
 when these scales and weights were not provided by the seign- 
 ior or the lessee of the mill, they were to be furnished at 
 his charge by the judges of the royal courts. The judges 
 were further instructed to examine the toll measure of each mill, 
 " to see that it is made exact and plainly stamped, and to pro- 
 hibit all millers from using any other measure than that which 
 shall have been so inspected and marked." Millers were also 
 enjoined to mark the weight of the grain on a tally and to hand 
 
 1 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 63.
 
 112 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 an exact duplicate of this tally to the owner of the grain, in 
 order that he might therewith verify the weight of his flour 
 when it was returned to him ; and, finally, they were prohibited 
 under pain of corporal punishment {ineme de piinition corporeile) 
 from " wetting the grain brought to them in order to render 
 the flour thereof heavier," — apparently a common trick of the 
 millers.-^ 
 
 In addition to this general code of regulations, ordinances 
 were issued from time to time with a view to improving the 
 machinery, equipment, and management of particular mills ; and 
 from the considerable number of these ordinances it would seem 
 that the system of seigniorial flour-making was far from being 
 always satisfactory to the people. A few examples will suffice. 
 In 1714 one of the habitants of the seigniory of Vincelotte, 
 having been summoned before the court of the Prevote at 
 Quebec to answer to the charge of having sent his grain to 
 " strange mills," urged in his defence that the banal mill of his 
 own seigniory was a poor one, that it " made very bad flour," and 
 that the miller " gave a too small return of flour for the grain." ^ 
 The court declared that the defence was a good one, and forth- 
 with ordered the seignior to have his mill improved, giving him 
 to understand that his exclusive right should be enforced when 
 this order was obeyed. From this decision the seignior of 
 Vincelotte made appeal to the Superior Council, which suspended 
 any definite action pending a reference of the matter to the king.^ 
 The latter promptly confirmed the action of the court of the Pre- 
 vote, and issued instructions that, whenever the seigniorial mill 
 was shown to be defective in any respect whatever, the habit- 
 ants should be allowed to have their grain ground elsewhere.^ 
 
 1 " Arret du Conseil Superieur de Quebec, portant Reglement pour les Boulangers 
 et Meuniers," December 2, 1715, Edits et Ordonnauces,\\. 169-170, especially §§ v-x. 
 
 2 A copy of this judgment is not printed, but a manuscript copy of the original 
 was laid before the Special Seigniorial Court in 1854. See Lafontaine, Observa- 
 tions, 323, note. 
 
 ^ T\i& Jugements et Deliberations du Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle-France does 
 not contain the records of the council proceedings after December, 1 716. The 
 documents in this contestation have, therefore, not been printed; but reference is 
 made to them, and extracts are given, in Lafontaine, Observations, 322. 
 
 * The royal despatch vi^as dated April 16, 1719, and was enregistered by the council 
 on October 2, 1720 {^Ibid. 323).
 
 THE BANALITIES. II3 
 
 In 1728 a number of residents in the seigniory of Grondines 
 set forth, in a petition to the council, that "it is most 
 grievous and prejudicial to them to be compelled to take 
 their grain to the windmill of the seigniory, inasmuch as the 
 stones of this mill merely crack up the wheat ; for the mill 
 has been absolutely ruined by the different persons who have 
 been operating it, and the defects are increased by the fact 
 that the Sieur Hamelin, who now works it [ Hamelin was him- 
 self the seignior] is not a miller by trade." The seignior, 
 being called upon for his defence, declared that his mill 
 was in excellent order ; that, while it was true that he was 
 trying to work the mill himself, this was not his fault, as his 
 miller had been called out to do military service ; that he was 
 about to secure the services of a competent miller, and hence 
 there would be no reasonable ground of complaint in future. 
 Finally, Hamelin asked the council to appoint experts to ex- 
 amine the mill in order to verify the truth of his state- 
 ments. Taking him at his word, the council forthwith ap- 
 pointed a commission to inspect the Grondines mill, but with 
 what result is not recorded. ^ 
 
 In the same year the habitants of the seigniory of Sainte- 
 Anne de la Perade sent a delegation before the authorities 
 at Quebec to make complaint that the mill of their seigniory 
 was " entirely out of order, " that the miller " not only was 
 a dishonest man but was known to the seignior to be such," 
 and that the mill was not of sufficient capacity to serve the 
 needs of the numerous habitants. For these reasons, they 
 asked to be allowed to take their grist to the mill of a neighboring 
 seigniory. The intendant, Dupuy, finding on careful examina- 
 tion of the complaints that the habitants had greatly exagger- 
 ated the real condition of affairs, issued a judgment ordering 
 them to patronize the mill of their own seigniory.^ 
 
 The inhabitants of the seigniory of Neuville seemed to be 
 more fortunate than their neighbors ; for their seignior had 
 provided two mills for their use, a windmill and a water-mill. 
 This double facility, however, appears not to have rendered 
 them very satisfactory service, for in 1733 they made vigorous 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 241. * Ibid, ii. 497-498.
 
 114 ^^^ BANALITIES. 
 
 protests to the intendant that one of the mills was seldom in 
 operation and that the other turned out defective flour. " Our 
 seignior," they further complained, "when the windmill fails 
 for wind or the water-mill for water, keeps us hauling grain 
 back and forth from one mill to the other as often as three 
 times." ^ They also enumerated a list of improvements 
 which they desired to have made in the mill of their seigniory, 
 asking, among various other things, that the seignior be com- 
 pelled to employ a professional miller who should live near 
 the mill, " in order that the habitants may not have to travel 
 leagues in search of him when they want their grain ground." 
 In their further request that the seignior be ordered to 
 provide his mill with " stamped weights of iron instead of 
 common stones, the weight whereof is not shown," they 
 unconsciously furnish an interesting commentary on the rude 
 equipment of some of the banal mills.^ 
 
 Complaints were sometimes made that the seigniorial mills 
 were situated in inaccessible places, or at least in places which 
 the habitants could not reach easily. Many seigniors appear to 
 have built their mills along the banks of some rivulet or creek, 
 without taking much thought as to the accessibility of the loca- 
 tion ; and consequently their habitants were often left to make 
 their way through the forest with loads of grain as best they 
 might. In this difficulty the intendant, as usual, came to the 
 relief of the people. In one case he ordered a seignior to re- 
 build his mill at a point where it could be reached by water, or 
 else to build a road to the mill at his own expense;^ and in an- 
 other case, in which the seignior refused to open up a road, the 
 court of the Prevote at Quebec rendered a judgment absolving 
 all the habitants from their banal obligations to the recalcitrant 
 seignior until a "passable road" should have been provided for 
 their use.^ Since a seigniory frequently comprised from fifty 
 
 1 This was not the first complaint on this score ; for three years previously 
 (1730) the authorities had found it necessary to issue a decree giving habitants of 
 the seigniory of Saurel the right, when their grain remained unground at a windmill 
 for forty-eight hours, to take it away and have it made into flour wherever they 
 chose. See Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 340; also above, p. III. 
 
 2 Ibid. iii. 286-289. ^ Ibid. 210. 
 
 * Perrault, Extraits ou Precedents tires des Registres de la Prcvoste de Quebec, 7 1.
 
 THE BANALITIES. II5 
 
 to one hundred square miles, the difficulty of transporting grain 
 to the banal mill was at best often a very serious one. Ordi- 
 narily transportation took place in winter, when heavy loads 
 could be taken on sleighs along the river; for throughout the 
 greater part of the French era the frozen St. Lawrence was the 
 great inland highway for winter traffic. 
 
 Apart from the necessity of building his mill in a place that 
 would be easily accessible to his habitants, the seignior was com- 
 pletely free as to the choice of a mill site. If he saw fit to 
 erect it upon land which had previously been granted to a habit- 
 ant, he might, on application to the council, obtain a decree 
 reuniting the site to his own domain, the habitant having the 
 privilege of selecting a new concession of similar extent from 
 any portion of the ungranted lands of the seigniory. Several 
 decrees of this sort were obtained.^ 
 
 Through constant pressure upon the seigniors, the intendant 
 Gilles Hocquart managed, during his tenure of office, to improve 
 very noticeably the colonial milling industry. Hocquart hoped 
 that Canada might become a large exporter of flour to the 
 French West Indies, if not to France itself; but his hopes were 
 not realized, for, even with the improvements which he managed 
 to secure, the mills remained extremely crude. Very few seign- 
 iors made any profit from them, and with no gain in sight 
 were not easily induced to sink money in machinery; besides, few 
 of them could have afforded to do so even had they been dis- 
 posed. Moreover, the spur of competition, which serves in 
 modern times to force improved methods in all branches of in- 
 dustry, was entirely lacking in the milling system of the old 
 regime, when the seignior had a monopoly of the grinding of 
 his habitants' grain. Whatever his facilities might be, he re- 
 ceived the same amount of toll; for the improving of his mill 
 would not necessarily bring him a single additional minot of 
 grist per year, or a whit more than one-fourteenth as his share. 
 Under these circumstances, it is easy to see why Hocquart found 
 his task of improving the system so difficult, and why the quality 
 of the flour caused the bakers continually to complain. 
 
 In one of his despatches, Hocquart advised the minister 
 
 ^ See, for example. Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 466.
 
 Il6 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 that the quality of the flour might be materially improved 
 if the grain were properly cleaned before it was ground. He 
 reminded him that there were, of course, no fanning-mills in 
 the colony, and hinted that, since it seamed out of the ques- 
 tion to compel the seigniors to provide them. His Majesty 
 might lend a hand in the matter.^ As usual, the king, professing 
 his constant interest in the development of colonial industry, 
 promptly gratified the wish of the intendant by sending out six 
 fanning-mills {cribles cyliiidriqiies et de fil de fer a la fa^on 
 d'Hollande) at the royal expense. These arrived in 1732 and 
 were distributed gratis among the more important mills, — those 
 of the seigniories of Sault-a-la-Puce, Petit-Pre, Beauport, Pointe 
 de Levy, St. Nicholas, and St. Famille. Accompanying the 
 king's gift was an ordinance instructing the millers of these 
 mills " to have all the wheat, of whatever quality, passed and 
 fanned before its conversion into flour," and, furthermore, to 
 take their toll merely upon the cleaned and fanned grain, not 
 upon the whole grist. In compensation for this loss, however, 
 they were to be allowed to exact six deniers per minot on the 
 whole grist, in addition to the usual toll of one-fourteenth. All 
 "tailings" were to be given back to the habitant.^ 
 
 During the next year five more fanning-mills were shipped 
 out by the king, and distributed by the colonial officials among 
 the mills of the Montreal district.^ The king promised to send 
 out a small number each year until all the mills should have 
 been provided with fans ; but apparently he did not carry out 
 his good intentions. 
 
 The seigniorial mills were usually constructed of rough-hewn 
 timber, but not a few were built substantially of stone.* The 
 stone mills were usually of circular shape, and were frequently 
 loopholed in order that they might be made to serve as places 
 of refuge and defence in the event of sudden Indian attacks. 
 The mill of the seigniory of St. Sulpice at Montreal, for ex- 
 
 ^ Hocquart to Minister, October 4, 1731, Correspondence Generale, liv. 43. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 352-353. 
 
 3 They were given, one each to the mills of Lachine, Isle Jesus, and Isle Ste. 
 Helene, and two to the mill of Terrebonne. 
 
 * Several of these old stone windmills are still standing.
 
 THE BANALITIES. 11/ 
 
 ample, was a veritable fort, and was rightly counted as one of 
 the chief strongholds of the district. The mills built in seign- 
 iories belonging to the various religious orders were, in general, 
 much more substantial and much better equipped than those in 
 the lay seigniories, a fact which is accounted for by the com- 
 parative opulence of the orders. 
 
 In all cases the seignior took from the lands of the seigniory, 
 both granted and ungranted, such material as he found neces- 
 sary for construction, and in some cases compelled the habit- 
 ants to render their corvees in preparing the materials and 
 erecting the mills. He was quite at liberty to have the ordi- 
 nary annual days of corvee applied to this work when he so 
 desired, but apparently he could not exact any special corvee 
 for the purpose.^ 
 
 In the negotiations which led to the abolition of the seign- 
 iorial system in 1854, there were three questions regarding the 
 extent of the banal rights which had to be determined before 
 the amount of compensation due the seigniors for the loss of 
 their seigniorial privileges could be properly ascertained. The 
 first of these was the question whether all grain grown by the 
 habitant was subject to the banal obhgation, or only such portion 
 of it as was required for the consumption of the habitant and his 
 family. The seigniors took the ground that their rights extended 
 over all the grain of the habitant, whether it was intended for 
 home consumption or for sale; but the authorities at Quebec 
 did not support them in this view. The Parliament of Paris 
 had decided that, according to Article LXXI of the custom, the 
 seigniors could exercise their banal right only over the grain in- 
 tended for consumption by the famihes of their censitaires, who 
 were at complete liberty to have the grain intended for sale ground 
 wherever they chose ; and this rule was fully recognized in Can- 
 ada, as may be seen from the wording of an intendant's ordi- 
 nance issued by B6gon in 1716, whereby the habitants of the 
 seigniory of Champlain are ordered to take to the mill of the 
 said seigniory the " grain intended for the sustenance of their 
 
 1 In one case, however, the intendant ordered the habitants of a seigniory to give 
 special corvee to rebuild a bridge leading to a seigniorial mill. See Edits et Ordon- 
 nances, iii. 459.
 
 Il8 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 families on pain of paying a fine of ten livres to the church of 
 the parish of the said seigniory." ^ During the greater part of 
 the French era the question was of no considerable importance, 
 for the amount of grain raised by the habitants was not much 
 more than was necessary for their own use; in many years, indeed, 
 it was found necessary to import grain from France. After the 
 colony passed into British hands, however, the production of grain 
 rapidly increased, and the question whether a seignior lawfully 
 enjoyed a monopoly of milling all the grain raised within his 
 seigniory became one of very considerable moment to both parties 
 concerned. 
 
 The second question was whether the banal right extended to 
 all kinds of grain, or to wheat alone. As to the status of this 
 question in France under the Custom of Paris there is some dif- 
 ference of opinion. Henrion de Pansey affirms that the banal 
 right extended not only to wheat but to barley, buckwheat, and 
 all other grains;^ but other authorities of equal weight declare 
 that the right could be legally enforced in regard to wheat alone.^ 
 Judge Caron, in his opinion delivered before the Special Seign- 
 iorial Court of 1854, declared that, while there might be a dif- 
 ference of opinion regarding the legal extent of the right in 
 France, the fact was that in that country wheat alone was gener- 
 ally ground. " If any other kinds of grain were ground," says he, 
 " it was such a rare occurrence that it was not thought of suffi- 
 cient importance to be mentioned." In Canada, however, the 
 extent of the right was undoubtedly wider.^ In the title-deeds 
 granted by the seigniors the phrase '' portermoudre leurs grains'' 
 was almost invariably used ; likewise in the various ordinances 
 the term "grains " usually appears ; in some few instances the ex- 
 pression is "porter moicdre leur bled" but these cases are dis- 
 tinctly exceptional.^ The fact that, so far as can be ascertained, 
 
 1 " Grains qu'ils consomment pour la subsistance de leurs families " {Edits et Or- 
 donnances, ii. 452). For other ordinances in which precisely the same words are 
 used, see Ibid. i. 225, ii. 497, iii. 119. 
 
 2 Dissertations Feodales, i. 89. 
 
 ^ See the authorities cited by Judge Caron in his Observations, 38. 
 * Ibid. 39. 
 
 ^ See ordinances of July 10, 1728, and July 11, 1742, Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 
 A91> 565 ; also Titres des Seigneuries, 242-243.
 
 THE BANALITIES. II9 
 
 none of the habitants ever appealed to the authorities against 
 the seigniors' claims to the extension of the banal right to all 
 forms of grain would seem to indicate that the extension was 
 not opposed. In fact, if we may judge broadly from the single 
 case in which the matter came before the intendant, it would 
 appear that the habitants actually desired to have all their grain 
 ground at the seigniorial mill. In 1738, for example, the habit- 
 ants of the seigniory of Beaumont petitioned the intendant to 
 have it declared that the miller of the seigniory should be bound 
 to grind " not only the wheat of the said habitants but also their 
 other grain " ; whereupon the intendant ordered that " their other 
 grain be ground in the said mill as well as their wheat." ^ 
 Since there was little or no profit to be had by the seignior from 
 the grinding of wheat, the work of grinding the less valuable 
 grains must have been attended, in many cases, with actual loss 
 to the mill owners. 
 
 The third question was whether a habitant who purchased 
 grain outside the seigniory and brought it within was or was 
 not bound to have it ground at the seigniorial mill.^ There 
 seems to be no colonial ordinance or judgment bearing directly 
 upon this point ; but the understanding appears to have been 
 that, when grain was both purchased and ground outside the 
 limits of a seigniory, tlie habitant might bring home the flour 
 without having to pay any toll to his own seignior, but when 
 the grain was purchased outside and brought home unground, it 
 was to be on the same footing as that grown within the seign- 
 iory. The disposition was to look upon the right of banality as 
 extending in no case beyond the limits of the seigniory ; the 
 grain was held subject to the obligation if it were brought within 
 the seigniorial limits and made use of there, even if it had 
 been grown outside. ^ 
 
 The right of banality carried with it the right, not only to pre- 
 vent the erection of other than seigniorial mills within the seign- 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 324. 
 
 2 Henrion de Pansey {^Dissertations Feodales, i. 191) asserts that in France a cen- 
 sitaire who purchased grain elsewhere than within the limits of the seigniory might 
 have it ground elsewhere, and might carry the flour home without violating the 
 seignior's right of banality. 
 
 '^ See Carun, Observations, 39-40.
 
 120 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 iory, but even to compel the demolition of such after they had 
 been erected, a power which was sometimes exercised under cir- 
 cumstances which entailed much hardship. For example, in 1698 
 one of the habitants of the seigniory of -Lauzon was permitted 
 by the seignior to erect a mill, as there was at that time no 
 banal mill in operation within the seigniory. Some few years 
 later the seigniory was sold ; whereupon the new seignior forth- 
 with ordered the mill to be closed, and upon the refusal of the 
 owner to close it he procured an ordinance compelling compli- 
 ance.^ Another case was that of the Brethren of the Hospital 
 {Frkres Charroii) at Montreal, who had erected, on the plot of 
 ground granted to them, a small windmill, which they used 
 solely to grind their own grain. The Seminary of St. Sulpice 
 at Montreal, within whose seigniory the land lay, not only de- 
 manded the demolition of this mill, but obtained from the 
 Superior Council an ordinance supporting its demand.^ Several 
 other instances of the exercise of this right of demolition are on 
 record.^ 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing consideration that the 
 obligation of mill banality did not bear heavily upon the habit- 
 ants so long as the country was sparsely settled. On the 
 contrary, the presence of a mill within the limits of the seign- 
 iory was a great convenience to the habitant; and the amount 
 of toll exacted was far from exorbitant, especially in view of the 
 limited custom which the mill might expect. Throughout the 
 greater part of the French era the burden, such as it was, fell 
 rather upon the seignior, who was obliged by the authorities 
 to build the mill and work it, — for the most part, at a loss, — on 
 pain of being deprived of what was sure to become in time a 
 very valuable right. Moreover, the authorities showed them- 
 selves ready at all times to Hsten to complaints on the part of 
 the habitants as to the inefficiency of the seigniorial milling 
 facilities, and were equally ready, when these complaints ap- 
 peared well founded, to order the necessary improvements at the 
 seignior's expense. As the population increased, however, 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 145. 
 
 2 This ordinance is not printed. Its authenticity is vouched for, however, by 
 Chief-Justice Sir L. H. Lafontaine, in his Observations, 334. 
 ^ Cf. Caron, Observations, 40.
 
 THE BANALITIES. 121 
 
 toward the close of the French period and especially with the 
 British acquisition of the colony, the burden shifted from the 
 seignior to the habitants. The seigniorial mills now had plenty 
 to do, and frequently found it impossible to handle all the grain 
 brought in. In such cases the habitants were compelled either 
 to wait their turn, often at great inconvenience, or to purchase 
 the seignior's permission to take their grain elsewhere. Indeed, 
 as will be seen later, the banal right gradually developed, with 
 the growth of the colony in population, into a right on the part 
 of the seignior to exact a money payment from the habitants for 
 permission to take their grain where they chose. 
 
 The other form of banal right which was claimed by the 
 Canadian seignior, — the droit de four banal, or right of oven 
 banality, — though exacted in very few instances, deserves some 
 notice if only to show how zealously the authorities sought to 
 curb any unreasonable pretensions on the part of the seigniors 
 and to modify the seigniorial system into accord with colonial 
 conditions. By the terms of the Custom of Paris the right of 
 oven banality was put upon the same footing as that of mill 
 banality ; that is to say, it was not an incident of the possession 
 of a seigniory, but rested upon the contract made between the 
 seignior and his censitaire when an original grant of lands was 
 made. As the seignior could oblige his censitaire to have his 
 grain ground at the seigniorial mill, so he had the right to stipu- 
 late that the censitaire should make exclusive use of a banal 
 oven or ovens erected within the limits of the seigniory, paying 
 him a toll for such privilege.^ At the most, only three or four 
 seigniorial ovens were ever erected in Canada ; but a clause re- 
 quiring the habitants to bring their dough to a banal oven 
 whenever such should be erected appears in a number of 
 title-deeds.^ 
 
 ^ The amount of toll exacted in France seems to have been usually one twenty- 
 fourth of the bread. Cf. Mathieu, VAncien Regime dans la Province de Lorraine 
 (1879). 285. 
 
 2 A banal oven was erected in the seigniory of Vincelotte by the seignior, M. 
 Amiot, and there is some evidence that a few other seigniors followed M. Amiot's 
 example ; but it is unquestionalily misleading to speak of the obligation of oven 
 banality as having been imposed in any such general fashion as was that of mill 
 banality. Cf. Thwaites, France in America, 132
 
 122 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 The increasing disposition to insert this obligation seems to 
 have attracted the notice of the intendant in 1707; for in his 
 despatch to the French minister in that year the ever-watchful 
 Raudot speaks of this growing practice as one of the abuses of 
 the seigniorial system. " The seigniors," he writes, " have also 
 introduced into their grants the exclusive right of baking, or 
 maintaining an oven, of which the inhabitants can never avail 
 themselves, because, the habitations being at great distances 
 from the seignior's house, where the oven must be established 
 (which indeed could not be in a more convenient place for them 
 wherever placed, since the habitations are very distant from 
 one another), they could not possibly at all seasons carry their 
 dough to it ; in winter it would be frozen before it got there. 
 The seigniors, moreover," continues the intendant, "feel them- 
 selves so ill-grounded in claiming this right on account of its 
 impossibility, that they do not exact it now, but they will at 
 some future time make use of this stipulation to compel the 
 inhabitants either to submit to it or to redeem themselves from 
 it by means of a large fine ; in this way the seigniors will have 
 acquired a right from which the inhabitants derive no benefit 
 whatever. This, My Lord, is what I call getting a title to vex 
 them afterwards." ^ 
 
 In reply to this despatch, the French minister advised the in- 
 tendant : " With respect to the privilege of baking in seigniorial 
 ovens, all that is to be done is to follow the arret of 1686, by 
 which that matter has been definitely settled." ^ The minister, 
 however, was here clearly in error, for the arret of 1686 had ref- 
 erence wholly to banal mills, and contained not a single word 
 in either direct or inferential relation to the question of seigniorial 
 ovens; it simply ordered that seigniors who claimed the right of 
 mill banality should forthwith erect their mills, or stand prepared 
 to lose their privilege.^ Did the minister mean, then, that the 
 same principle should be applied to the right of oven banality, 
 
 ^ Raudot to Pontchartrain, November lo, 1707, Correspondance Ghierale, xxvi. 
 7-34- 
 
 2 Pontchartrain to Raudot, June 13, 1 708, Correspondence between the French Gov- 
 ernment and the Governors and Intendants of Canada, etc., 9-10. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 105.
 
 THE BANALITIES. 1 23 
 
 namely, that the seigniors who claimed this right should proceed 
 at once with the erection of the ovens, or be deprived of the right 
 for all time ? The intendant appears to have taken this to be the 
 purport of the minister's instructions ; but as this interpretation 
 would entail the pursuance of a policy which he did not regard 
 as conducive to the interest of the colony, he sent a second de- 
 spatch to France, in the autumnof 1708, in which he again adverted 
 to the matter in order to show the minister the wide difference 
 in the practical operation of the two forms of banal rights. 
 
 In this communication Raudot stated very clearly his reasons 
 for wishing a continuance of the obligation of mill banality and 
 a suppression of the obligation of oven banality. " The only 
 reason," he writes, "for which I have proposed that the privilege 
 of baking {fours banaiix) be suppressed is that those who are 
 subjected to it find that it is impossible to use the banal ovens 
 on account of the distance at which they live from their seign- 
 ior's houses, the seigniories in this country not being settled as 
 they are in France, where almost all the inhabitants are collected 
 in villages near each other, and all within reach of the banal 
 ovens. Here the inhabitants of the seigniories, which are at 
 least two leagues in extent along the river St. Lawrence, are 
 all settled along the said river, so that, the banal oven being in 
 the seignior's house (which is always in the centre of the seign- 
 iory), some of the inhabitants would be compelled to carry their 
 dough a distance of a league, or even two or three leagues, from 
 their homes. Besides the inconvenience to which this would 
 subject them at all seasons, there is even an impossibility in 
 winter, as their dough would be frozen before they could reach 
 the place where the oven was situated. It is a right. My Lord, 
 which must be suppressed, because the inhabitants cannot derive 
 any benefit from it, and because the seigniors have estabHshed, 
 or wish to establish it only to oblige the inhabitants to redeem 
 themselves from it by consenting to pay in future some heavy 
 charge in consideration of the servitude from which they wish 
 to be liberated. It is not so. My Lord, with the banal mill, 
 this being always to the advantage of the inhabitants, who have 
 not the means of erecting mills themselves; whereas the banal 
 oven is to their disadvantage, since there is not one of them
 
 124 
 
 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 who has not an oven in his own house and as much wood as he 
 wants to heat it." ^ 
 
 This correspondence is of interest and importance as showing 
 two significant features which seem to have characterized the 
 working of the whole seigniorial system in Canada. In the first 
 place, it emphasizes the occasional disposition on the part of the 
 seigniors to stretch their legal claims to the point of interference 
 with the normal comfort of their dependents, and to stipulate 
 for rights which, from the very nature of things in Canada, could 
 not be enforced in their stipulated form. On the other hand, it 
 as clearly shows the zeal with which the colonial authorities 
 sought to protect the habitants against obligations which, though 
 strictly within the letter of the law, were regarded as unreason- 
 able or detrimental to the interests of colonial development as a 
 whole. It is evident that the authorities viewed the colonial 
 feudal system as resting, partly at least, upon a utilitarian basis. 
 To Raudot the question was not whether the grant of a seigniory 
 gave the seignior a right to impose the obligation of oven banal- 
 ity upon his dependents, for he knew that by the Custom of 
 Paris the seignior clearly possessed such right; the question was 
 rather whether a seigniorial privilege which operated to the 
 inconvenience of the habitants without giving them any corre- 
 sponding benefit should not be peremptorily suppressed. The 
 rights of the seigniors, it may be added, were not, under the 
 French rule, regarded as vested rights which might not be taken 
 away without compensation ; it was only after the British con- 
 quest that they came to be so regarded. 
 
 The forebodings of the intendant in regard to the exercise of 
 the right of oven banality proved, however, to be ill founded ; 
 for, although no authority seems to have been obtained from 
 the home authorities for the suppression of the right, the seign- 
 iors, with very few exceptions, do not appear either to have 
 insisted upon the rendering of the obligation or to have exacted 
 a money payment in its stead. 
 
 In France, as has been said, there were many other forms of 
 banality, among them the right of maintaining banal wine- 
 
 ^ Raudot to Pontchartrain, October 18,1708, Correspondance GeneraU, xxvii. 
 175-187.
 
 THE BANALITIES. 1 25 
 
 presses, banal slaughter-houses, and so on ; but none of these 
 privileges seem to have been claimed in Canada. In a few in- 
 stances the seigniors erected cider-mills ; but in each case this 
 was done as a private commercial enterprise on the part of the 
 seignior, and cannot be regarded as the exercise of any right 
 of banality. 
 
 It is the practice of most writers on the history of Canada to 
 look upon the banalities as among the most odious incidents of 
 the seigniorial system ; ^ and this attitude is, no doubt, accounted 
 for by the fact that, with the growth of the colonial population 
 during the latter days of the system, the enforcement of the 
 seigniorial right of mill banality was attended with large profits 
 to the seigniors and with considerable inconvenience to the in- 
 habitants. The fact is, however, as has been pointed out, that 
 both the French government and its colonial representatives 
 sought to develop the system of banal mills in the interest of 
 the poorer habitants, and not merely to the profit of the seign- 
 iorial proprietors. This is shown by the issue of royal edicts 
 like that of 1686,^ compelling the seigniors to erect their banal 
 mills as " necessary for the subsistence of the inhabitants," as 
 well as by the argument of Raudot that, whereas the mills were 
 a great convenience to the people, the ovens were not, and that 
 the rights of mill and oven banality ought, therefore, to be 
 regarded from two entirely different points of view. It will be 
 noticed that throughout the French period the complaints of 
 the habitants to the authorities were not that the system of 
 banal mills was burdensome as a system, but that individual 
 seigniors were not living up to the obligations imposed upon 
 them in the way of providing proper facilities. 
 
 If one may judge from the amount of pressure necessary to 
 compel the erection of the seigniorial mills, it seems probable 
 that, had the milling industry been left to private enterprise, 
 large tracts of sparsely settled territory would have remained 
 
 ^ Cf. Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, ii. 48. On the other hand, the 
 milling right seems to have escaped the criticism of some in the belief that it was not 
 enforced. Professor Goldwin Smith, for example (in his Canada and the Canadian 
 Question, 72), thinks that it " must have been almost a dead letter." 
 
 2 See above, p. 105.
 
 126 THE BANALITIES. 
 
 without any milling facilities at all. Since, at the best, colonial 
 agriculture developed under many very serious difficulties and 
 discouragements, it behooved the authorities to see that any 
 desirable conveniences which could be placed at the disposal of 
 the farmers without expense to the public treasury should be 
 given them, even though such favor imposed a burden upon the 
 seigniors ; for, although the latter were by no means opulent as 
 a class, they were better able than their habitants to bear the 
 load. 
 
 The action of the authorities of New France in encourag- 
 ing the seigniorial milling industry is only one feature of a 
 general economic policy which aimed at making agriculture 
 more attractive and more profitable to the colonist; and agri- 
 culture was strongly in need of official encouragement, for the 
 attractions and profits of the fur trade exerted an almost irre- 
 sistible influence in drawing the habitant off his land into the 
 forest. Whatever judgment may be passed upon the methods 
 which the authorities employed in fostering agriculture and in 
 endeavoring to hold the passion for forest trade within its proper 
 bounds, there can be little doubt that the general policy was 
 dictated by the soundest interests of permanent colonial progress. 
 Talon, Raudot, and Hocquart fully recognized that they could 
 lay solid foundations for later colonial growth, not by permitting 
 the population to devote its whole energies to the exploitation 
 of a transitory resource, such as the peltry traffic was sure to be, 
 but by encouraging it to clear and cultivate the land.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 The seigniorial rights enumerated in the foregoing chapters 
 by no means exhaust the hst of privileges possessed by the seign- 
 iors in relation to their dependents. There were various other 
 rights, no one of which constituted in itself an important incident 
 of Canadian feudalism, but which, taken together, contributed 
 substantially to increase the prestige, power, and income of the 
 seigniors. Among these were the right to exact a certain num- 
 ber of days of corvee, or forced labor, in each year; the right to 
 make certain reservations in the deeds of lands granted to habit- 
 ants, and to insert divers prohibitions in them ; the droit de 
 peche, or right to a share of the fish caught by the habitants in 
 seigniorial waters; the right of ferry over rivers within the seign- 
 iorial jurisdiction; and various other privileges. 
 
 First in point of importance was, of course, the corv6e. By 
 the Custom of Paris the seignior's right to exact days of corvee 
 from his dependents stood upon the same basis as his right to 
 enforce the banalities ; that is to say, he could legally enforce 
 the right only when he had stipulated for it in the title-deeds of 
 granted lands.^ It would seem that, during the earlier years of 
 the French rule in Canada, it was not customary to stipulate 
 for or to enforce the exaction. There may have been, and prob- 
 ably were, exceptions to the general rule ; but the fact that in 
 Raudot's despatches of 1707-1708 the corvee is not mentioned at 
 all would seem to indicate that forced labor was not being exacted 
 by the seigniors in any general fashion, otherwise the watchful 
 intendant would in all probability have included it with the oven 
 banahty and the droit de retrait'm. his list of "vexatious exactions."^ 
 
 ^ "Nul seigneur ne peut contraindre ses sujets . . . faire corvees, s'il n'en a titre 
 valable, ou aveu et denombryment ancien " i^Cotitiime de Paris, article Ixxi). 
 ^ See above, p. 98. 
 
 127
 
 128 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 As time went on, however, the seigniors seem to have begun 
 the practice of stipulating for a certain number of days of corvee 
 per year, and apparently of exacting it even in cases in which 
 they had made no such stipulation. In such instances the habit- 
 ants were sometimes told that the labor was to compensate the 
 seignior for the use of the seigniorial commons by their cattle, 
 or for their privilege of taking wood from the seigniorial forests, 
 or for some other benefit of a like nature.^ In 1716 the in- 
 tendant Begon, in a despatch to the French minister, complained 
 that many of the seigniors induced their habitants to render 
 corvee in clearing the timber off parts of the seigniorial domains, 
 on the understanding that, when the land had been cleared, it 
 would be placed at their disposal for pasturage ; but that after 
 the work was done the habitants often found that they were com- 
 pelled, as the price of using this newly cleared land, to give 
 their seignior a number of days of free labor each year on his 
 other lands. Begon, therefore, asked for an ordinance forbid- 
 ding the exaction of corvee, — and particularly upon such pre- 
 texts as those mentioned, — except in such cases as the Custom 
 of Paris permitted.^ 
 
 In the spring of the following year (171 7) the matter was 
 referred by the minister to the Council of the Regent, which 
 passed a minute declaring that, in the opinion of the council, a 
 decree in accordance with the wishes of the intendant should 
 be issued. No special decree seems to have followed ; but in 
 the general arret, which was drafted in May, 171 7, for the reform 
 of the whole seigniorial system in the colony, a clause was in- 
 serted explicitly forbidding the exaction of corvee " under any 
 pretence whatever." Had this arret received the royal assent 
 and been promulgated in Canada, the end sought by Begon would 
 have been attained ; but, as has already been shown,^ it never 
 received the assent of the authorities, and affairs remained just 
 
 ^ In France, the right of the seignior to exact corvee or other compensation from 
 peasants for the privilege of pasturing their cattle upon the waste lands of the seign- 
 iory was known as the droit de blairie. The right was recognized in several 
 coutiimes. Cf. Tocqueville, 77/1? Old Regime and the Revolution, 337. 
 
 2 Begon to Minister, February, 17 16, Correspondance Generale, xxvi. 90. This 
 despatch does not bear the day of the month. 
 
 3 See above, p. 42. This unsigned arret is printed in Titles and Documents, i. 18-19.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 129 
 
 as they were before Begon brought the matter to the notice 
 of his superiors. 
 
 The unsigned arret of May, 171 7, proposed to go much far- 
 ther, however, than the intendant had suggested ; for it sought 
 to put an end to the exaction of corvee even when the seignior 
 had stipulated for it, as, according to the Custom of Paris, he 
 had a perfect right to do. On the other hand, the colonial 
 authorities had, on more than one occasion, sanctioned the 
 exaction when the seignior had been able to show them a copy 
 of his contract of concession to the habitant containing the 
 corvee clause. 
 
 In 1 7 14, for example, certain habitants of the seigniory of 
 Desjordy presented to the intendant a petition complaining that 
 the seignior sought to exact days of corvee in proportion to the 
 amount of land held by them ; that despite this exaction he 
 refused them the use of the seigniorial domain for pasturage ; 
 and that he persisted in asking for the labor in the busiest 
 seasons of the year. The seignior, being called upon for his 
 defence, contended that he was entitled to the corvee which he 
 demanded, " inasmuch as by their deeds of concession the habit- 
 ants are bound thereto " ; that he was not bound by law or 
 custom to allow his habitants the use of his land for pasturage ; 
 and that he had a right to select the seasons of the year in which 
 the labor should be given. The intendant, " having heard the 
 parties, considered the petition, and examined a deed of con- 
 cession," issued the following decree: "The said habitants 
 shall give to the seignior the daily corv6e labor mentioned in 
 their deeds, which said corvee labor the said seignior will exact 
 from them at different times and separately, — to wit, one day 
 during seed time, one during hay time, and one during harvest; 
 those who have more than three days to give shall give the 
 additional ones during the season of ploughing; such of the 
 habitants as desire to exempt themselves from the said corvee 
 labor may do so upon payment to the said seignior of forty sols 
 for each day of labor, provided payment be made forthwith to 
 the person notifying them to furnish the labor." ^ 
 
 It will be noticed that the exaction was enforced because it 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnajtces, ii. 437.
 
 130 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 had been bargained for, not because it was regarded by the 
 authorities as compensation on the part of the habitants for the 
 use of the seigniorial domain as pasture land. It will also be 
 noticed that the only steps taken by the intendant were in the 
 direction of protecting the habitants against the enforcement 
 of the right to the detriment of their own private employments. 
 This protection he secured, in the first place, by providing that 
 the corvee could be exacted only at different seasons of the 
 year, and in the second place by giving the habitants the option 
 of commuting the obligation to a money payment. 
 
 Some two years later (January 22, 1716) a petition was pre- 
 sented to the intendant by Frangois de Chavigny,^ who styled 
 himself "seignior of the fief and seigniory of La Chevrotiere," 
 complaining that some of his habitants had refused to perform 
 the days of corvee to which they were bound by the terms of 
 their title-deeds, on the ground that the seignior was not will- 
 ing to furnish them with food and tools during their period of 
 labor, as, they claimed, he was bound to do. Chavigny asked 
 for an ordinance upholding his refusal to meet the demands 
 of the habitants. 
 
 The intendant, on looking into the matter, found that a some- 
 what similar case had come before his predecessor, Raudot, in 
 1 7 10, and that in this case the decision had been in the seign- 
 ior's favor.^ He therefore ordered that the habitants of La Chev- 
 rotiere should "give their corvee labor free of all expense to the 
 seignior, and without requiring him to procure for them their 
 food and the necessary tools." In the concluding paragraph of 
 this judgment, however, appears the somewhat startling prohi- 
 bition : " We do hereby forbid the said Sieur de la Chevrotiere 
 and the other seigniors of this colony to introduce into the 
 deeds of concession which they may hereafter grant the said 
 corvee clause {la dite clause de corT.'ecs) on pain of nullity." ^ It 
 seems strange that, if the intendant had in mind a general inter- 
 
 1 In the Edits et Ordonnances this name is erroneously spelled " Champigny." 
 ^ Although no copy of Raudot's judgment seems to have been preserved, the gist 
 of it is given in Begon's decree of January 22, 1716, which shows that it was rendered 
 in favor of M. Robineau, seignior of Portneuf, on June 4, 1 710. See Edits et Ordon- 
 nances, ii. 444. 
 3 Ibid 445.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 131 
 
 diction of future stipulations for corvee labor in the title-deeds 
 of subgrants, he should not have issued, or have had the Supe- 
 rior Council issue, a general ordinance to this effect, instead of 
 inserting the prohibition in a judgment rendered in a private dis- 
 pute and therefore to be published only in the neighborhood im- 
 mediately concerned. Still, the intention of Begon, as shown by 
 the wording of the judgment, seems quite clear. 
 
 This judgment was rendered on January 22, 1716; and hence 
 it was with the case fresh in mind that the intendant, sometime 
 during the course of the following month, wrote to the minister 
 asking that a decree be issued dealing with the corvee " and a 
 variety of other obligations contrary to the Custom of Paris and 
 to the interests of colonial development." The outcome of his 
 appeal has already been seen.^ Those seigniors who had before 
 1 7 16 stipulated for days of corvee continued to exact them from 
 their dependents, and were supported by the authorities in so 
 doing.^ There is also evidence that many of them took occasion 
 to insert the stipulation in concessions made after 17 16; but it 
 does not appear that they successfully sought the support of the 
 authorities in this procedure. 
 
 Extra days of corvee labor were sometimes demanded by 
 the seignior from his dependents for certain special purposes, 
 such, for example, as the building and repair of roads and 
 bridges, the erection and repair of the parish church and 
 presbytery, and occasionally for the erection of the manor-house 
 and mill. While the habitants do not appear to have been 
 under any legal obligation to respond to such demands, in 
 the event of their refusal the seignior could appeal to 
 the intendant, who, if he thought that the case was one in 
 which the habitants ought in the general interest to help the 
 seignior, would issue an ordinance providing a penalty for 
 continued recalcitrancy. Thus, in 1730 the habitants of the 
 seigniory of Demaure were ordered to proceed to work as 
 
 ' Above, p. 128. 
 
 ^ The Special Seigniorial Court of 1854 decided, with only one dissenting opinion, 
 that " the covenants contained in some deeds of concession, imposing days of per- 
 sonal labor {journees de corvee) upon the habitants for the advantage of seigniors, 
 are legal and give ground for indemnity." Begon's judgment of January 22, 1716, 
 was therefore held not to have established a general prohibition.
 
 132 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 soon as the harvest should have been garnered in, and "to 
 work incessantly" until the bridge leading to the seigniorial 
 mill should have been repaired.^ 
 
 Ordinances were likewise issued from time to time command- 
 ing the habitants to render service in the construction of 
 fortifications, public highways, and other works of general 
 colonial interest. The public roads of the colony were built, 
 for the most part, by the corvee labor of the habitants super- 
 vised by the seignior or by the captain of militia in the 
 parish, the whole under the general coordination of a royal 
 official known as the gi'and voyer. The duties of this official, 
 as set forth in an ordinance of 1706, were, in general, "to 
 visit all the seigniories in which main roads have not been 
 built, and to build such in concert with the proprietors of 
 seigniories, or, in their absence, with the capitaines de la milice, 
 unless there be a royal justice present; and to decide, in ac- 
 cordance with the opinion of six of the oldest and most promi- 
 nent habitants of the place, where the roads ought henceforth 
 to traverse, provided always that such roads shall be at least 
 twenty-four feet wide. " The ordinance further provided that 
 the habitants of every such place should, "each for himself, 
 aid in the construction of such roads and give his days of corvee 
 for this purpose whenever necessary." ^ This corvee, exacted 
 for the construction of public works under authority of the 
 royal officials at Quebec, was commonly known as the "king's 
 corvee" to distinguish it from the ordinary annual corvee 
 exacted by the seigniors for work upon their own domains. 
 
 The amount both of seigniorial and of royal corvee exacted 
 from the habitants varied in different sections and at different 
 periods. Usually, but not always, the amount of seigniorial 
 corvee was proportioned to the size of the grant obtained by 
 the habitant, the seignior exacting from one to thirty days per 
 year. Very rarely, however, did he demand more than six 
 days in all. The amount of royal corvee exacted in any 
 locality obviously depended upon the extent and nature of 
 the public works to be constructed. In the third volume 
 of the collection of Edits et Ordonnances will be found 
 
 1 Edits et Ordotmatices, iii. 459. 2 Ji^ij^ jj. i^-j^ § viii.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 133 
 
 many decrees ordering habitants in all parts of the colony 
 to turn out and labor, under the supervision of the grand 
 voyer, in the construction of all sorts of public works. ^ The 
 extent of the burden thus imposed upon the population of 
 the colony is not easily estimated, but it does not appear 
 to have been so great as to evoke any general protest from 
 the habitants. As the obligation might be commuted by the 
 payment of a small sum, it may be regarded as little more 
 than a tax upon the people for the construction and repair 
 of necessary public works.^ It was, in a way, the tritioda 
 nccessitas of the old regime in Canada, and did not differ 
 very essentially from the so-called " statute labor " obhgation 
 which is imposed upon the rural population in some of the 
 Canadian provinces at the present day. 
 
 After the British conquest, however, the seigniors seem very 
 generally to have increased their exactions of corvee labor, with 
 the object of augmenting the sum due in commutation by 
 the habitants. In the report of the commission which was 
 appointed by the legislature in 1843 to examine the work- 
 ings of the seigniorial system, it is affirmed that many of the 
 seigniors had taken occasion, whenever new deeds {Hires noii- 
 vels) were executed, to insert obligations of corvee labor, and, 
 despite the prohibition contained in the judgment of 1716, had 
 very generally continued the practice. The habitants, for 
 their part, according to the report, regarded the exaction of 
 the corvee as " hateful, odious, humiliating, and a badge of 
 servitude."^ 
 
 In granting lands, it was customary for the seigniors to make 
 certain reservations, the nature and extent of which varied in 
 different parts of the colony and at different periods in the 
 history of the seigniorial system. Although there were in 
 many seigniories reservations of a local character made to fit 
 local conditions, there were only four which appeared so fre- 
 
 ^ See, for example, Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 176, 197, 216, 217, 284, 436, etc. 
 
 2 In response to a petition presented by certain habitants of the seigniory of La 
 Chevrotiere in 1716, the intendant fixed the amount to be paid in lieu of corvee labor 
 at " twenty sols per year for each farm of three arpents in frontage by forty in 
 depth" (7^2^.11.449-450). 
 
 * Report of the Commissioners, 1843, Titles and Documents, i. 70.
 
 134 ^-^^ CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 quently as properly to be termed general features of the 
 system. These were the reservations of wood and stone, of 
 mines, ores, and minerals, of the use of beaches, and of mill, 
 manor, and church sites. 
 
 The reservation of wood and stone was the most common, 
 of the four ; it appears in so large a number of the title-deeds 
 of subgrants that it may very properly be looked upon as an 
 almost invariable incident of tenure en censive. In the deeds 
 of seigniories granted by the crown, it was, as has been seen,^ 
 the custom to stipulate for the reservation by the crown of such 
 timber as might be found suitable for use in the royal ship- 
 yards, as well as of such building materials as might be needed 
 in the construction of forts, batteries, and other public works in 
 the colony. In order, therefore, that these reserved rights of 
 the crown might be protected against any interference by the 
 habitants, the reservations contained in the seigniorial title- 
 deeds were repeated in the deeds of subgrants, whether held 
 en arri^re-fief or en censive. 
 
 The seigniors, however, went farther than this. In addition 
 to reserving such materials as might be sought by the royal 
 authorities, they usually stipulated that they should be at lib- 
 erty to take from the granted lands such quantities of wood and 
 stone as might be found necessary in the construction of 
 the seigniorial manor-house, mill, and church, and frequently, 
 also, such firewood as might be needed for heating any of these 
 buildings when erected. Occasionally, too, they reserved to 
 themselves all the standing timber on granted lands, allowing 
 the habitants to fell it for use or for sale only on condition of 
 paying a tax. 
 
 From the beginning to the end, the seigniors seem to have 
 had no legal right to make any reservations beyond what were 
 necessary to give force and effect to the royal reservations 
 stipulated for in their own titles. In general, the colonial 
 authorities supported the habitants in resisting reservations 
 beyond this point. Thus, in 1707 the intendant forbade the 
 Sieur de Hertel to " take or carry away any wood from the 
 lands belonging to his habitants " ; ^ and in 1714 a further ordi- 
 
 ^ Above, ch. iv. 2 £;^i(s et Ordonnances, iii. 130.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 135 
 
 nance directed that the seignior of Chambly should pay for all 
 the pine timber which he had taken from the lands of his habit- 
 ants for use in the construction of his mill.^ Sometimes, on 
 the other hand, the authorities pursued a different policy. In 
 1706, for example, the intendant supported the seigniors of the 
 island of Montreal in their claim to the right to take firewood 
 {bois de chanffage) from the lands of habitants on the island, 
 whenever they had stipulated for such right in the title-deeds 
 of subgrants.^ The fact that, in this instance, the seigniors 
 were a religious organization may have been regarded as a 
 circumstance warranting a departure from the usual official 
 policy. 
 
 Presently, however, the intendant Begon, in his long despatch 
 of 1 716, complained that the practice of making wide reserva- 
 tions was proving detrimental to the progress of the colony. 
 " Some of the seigniors," he wrote, "reserve to themselves in 
 their deeds of concession, the timber necessary for their houses 
 and other buildings, and the wood necessary for fuel. Others, 
 again, reserve timber for sale. Yet others grant to their habit- 
 ants leave to cut timber upon the ungranted lands, on condition 
 that they pay ten per cent of the value of the boards obtained 
 therefrom. When they concede woodlands they reserve for 
 themselves all the oak and pine timber thereon without com- 
 pensation to the habitants, and thus they are able to exact any 
 price they please for this wood, this being not only prejudicial to 
 building, but preventing a trade in such timber with the West 
 Indies and with France." ^ 
 
 It is worth noting that the draft arret of 1717 proposed to 
 " discharge the habitants from the seigniorial reservation which 
 forbade them to take any wood of what kind soever, whether 
 for building or for fuel, without payment";* but the general 
 attitude of the authorities toward the whole matter of timber 
 reservations is best stated in a judgment of the intendant, 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 166. 
 
 2 Ibid. 123. By this ordinance the seigniorial right was, however, limited to tak- 
 ing firewood from not more than one arpent in sixty. 
 
 ^ Begon to Minister, February, 1716, Correspondance Generate, xxvi. 124. 
 
 * Printed in Correspondence between the French Government and the Governors 
 and Intendants of Canada, etc., 17—18.
 
 136 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 rendered in July, 1722, in regard to certain claims on the part 
 of the seignior of Isles Bouchard. It appears that one of the 
 habitants of this seigniory had, in clearing his grant, cut down 
 some oak timber in violation of a clause in his title-deed by 
 virtue of which the seignior had reserved to himself the exclu- 
 sive right of cutting and using all oak timber in the seigniory; 
 whereupon the seignior, by way of compensating himself, had 
 seized a quantity of his habitant's grain. With a view to secur- 
 ing its restoration, the habitant therefore made appeal to the 
 intendant, who readily granted the redress asked for, and inter- 
 dicted the seignior from any further interference with the 
 habitants in this direction. ^ In the course of the judgment the 
 official attitude toward the question of timber reservations is 
 clearly stated as follows: "The reservation by the seign- 
 iors in their title-deeds of concession is made in consequence 
 of the clause inserted in all the concessions of seigniories in 
 this colony, by which His Majesty reserves for himself oak tim- 
 ber for shipbuilding and obliges the seigniors to reserve and 
 cause to be reserved the said oak by their habitants. This 
 does not confer upon the seigniors any property in oak timber 
 found on the lands which they concede ; His Majesty's inten- 
 tion is that the lands conceded shall be made productive, and 
 this can be done only by the habitants cutting down and clearing 
 off all the wood thereon ; ... it would not contribute to the 
 advancement of this colony if seigniors were allowed to retain 
 any property in the lands which they have conceded subject to 
 the seigniorial cens et rentes.'' ^ 
 
 This passage shows that the seigniorial rights in regard to 
 reservations of timber were limited by the royal reservations, — 
 that the seigniors were allowed to stipulate in the matter only 
 so far as was essential to the proper enforcement of the reserva- 
 tions made by the crown. From time to time the crown took 
 advantage of the reservations which it had thus made. In 1731, 
 for example, it issued an ordinance giving to certain naval con- 
 structors power to take from the seigniories of Berthier and 
 Dautray some two thousand feet of oak timber to be used in 
 the construction of a public vessel, " agreeably to the reserva- 
 
 1 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 471. '^ Ibid. 472.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 137 
 
 tions made by His Majesty of such timber for his own use in 
 the concessions of lands and seigniories of the colony." ^ Even 
 when the reservation had not been made in the original seign- 
 iorial title, it was sometimes effected later by ordinance. Thus, 
 in 1740 an intendant's ordinance, after declaring that informa- 
 tion has been brought to the authorities as to the existence of 
 considerable quantities of valuable oak timber in certain seign- 
 iories in the vicinity of Montreal, summarily orders all proprie- 
 tors in that vicinity, " of whatever quality and condition they 
 may be," to refrain from cutting down any oak trees until " such 
 of the same as shall be found suitable for the construction of 
 His Majesty's ships shall have been marked and reserved." ^ 
 In the same year a further ordinance summarily reserved a 
 quantity of standing red pine in the seigniory of Sorel as being 
 suitable for mastings for the navy ; ^ and in 1742, in order that 
 no suitable timber should escape reservation in any of the seign- 
 iories, Messrs. Noel Langlois and Pierre Abraham, two car- 
 penters, were commissioned to make a tour of the colony for the 
 purpose of looking up all serviceable timber and presenting a 
 report of their investigations to the council.* 
 
 The members of the Special Seigniorial Court, which, after 
 1854, looked into the validity of seigniorial reservations and the 
 right of seigniors to compensation on the abolition of their seign- 
 iorial tenure, were, with one exception, convinced that only such 
 reservations were valid as the seignior necessarily imposed in 
 order that he might be able to carry out the obligation laid 
 upon him by the crown in regard to the preservation of suitable 
 standing timber.^ The practice, therefore, of reserving fire- 
 wood, stone, sand, and other materials seems to have had no 
 legal basis ; and yet the fact remains that many such reserva- 
 tions were made and enforced throughout the whole period of 
 the old regime, and even under British rule. 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 348. ^ Ji,ij^ -^82. '^ Ibid. iii. 447. * Ibid. 469. 
 
 ^ " All reserves must be held to be legal, the object of which was the obligation 
 upon the tenant (censitaire) to allow the accomplishment by the seignior, and the 
 observance by himself, on his part, of the obligations of that nature, stipulated by the 
 king in the grant of the fief" (^Proceedings of the Special Seigniorial Court, 1S56, 
 p. 82). From this decision the Hon. Mr. Justice Mondelet dissented, for reasons 
 given in his Observations, 50-52.
 
 138 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 With only two exceptions, all the title-deeds of lands granted 
 en seigneurie contained a provision requiring seigniors to report 
 to the representative of the crown in the colony the discovery 
 of any mines or minerals within the limits of the conceded 
 lands. This precaution was taken to secure the king in the 
 exaction of the share due to him as dominant seignior. In 
 order to carry out this obligation, the seigniors, in turn, inserted 
 in the deeds which they granted to their habitants a provision 
 reserving rights to all mineral deposits found in the subgranted 
 lands.^ As there appear to have been no important discoveries 
 of mineral wealth within the limits of the seigniories, however, 
 this obligation was a formal one. 
 
 Most of the seigniories, as has been noted, fronted on the 
 St. Lawrence, in the waters of which a considerable fishing 
 industry was carried on. As many of the seigniors claimed the 
 exclusive right to iish in the waters fronting their seigniories, 
 and as some of them were in the habit of farming out this right,^ 
 it was customary for them to provide, in the deeds which they 
 gave their habitants to concessions fronting on the river, 
 that the grants should not include the beach between high 
 and low water mark. The use of this the seignior reserved 
 for himself and for those to whom he might sell the fishing 
 rights. In such cases the habitants were not to fish in the 
 waters fronting their lands without the permission of the 
 seignior.^ 
 
 Although this reservation was a common one, it seems in 
 most cases to have had no legal basis. The seignior had the 
 right to reserve for himself the beach between high and low 
 water mark only when in his seigniorial deed this tract had been 
 expressly given to him ; otherwise, as the Special Court held, 
 
 1 It was held by the Special Court (see its Proceedings, 82) that the terms 
 "mines" and " mineral deposits " did not include stone and slate quarries, sand 
 an 1 gravel pits, and so on, which, after the conquest, some of the seigniors sought 
 to include within them. 
 
 '■^ In 1723 the seignior of Portneuf, as we are told, leased his fishing rights for the 
 consideration of " four hogsheads of eels (^quatre bar7-iques cf angtiille) per year " 
 (^Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 205). 
 
 3 The peculiar method of catching fish and eels on the tidal beaches by means of 
 the " traps made of twisted oziers " which were commonly used by the habitants, is 
 described in Kalm's Travels into North America (1772), ii. 253-254,
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 139 
 
 the rights of the seigniors extended "to high water mark only." ^ 
 In only a very few cases had the crown expressly granted to 
 the seigniors the wider right. While many of the seigniors 
 reserved to themselves exclusive rights in the beaches of their 
 seigniories, most of them allowed their habitants to fish freely, 
 subject to the seigniorial droit de peche? 
 
 In many cases the seignior reserved the right to take from 
 subgranted lands such locations as might be found suitable for 
 the erection of a mill, manor-house, church, or presbytery. The 
 plots reserved varied in size ; but, even when no stipulation had 
 been made, custom seems to have sanctioned the taking of not 
 more than six arpents of land for such a location. No monetary 
 compensation was payable to the habitant, but the practice was 
 to allow him his choice of an equal area in the unconceded 
 lands of the seigniory. In one case the intendant, when called 
 upon by a seignior, forced a habitant to accept such an exchange.^ 
 
 After the conquest the number of reservations which the 
 seigniors attempted to make was greatly increased. Some 
 tried to reserve the right to divert watercourses, some to make 
 exclusive use of all waterways for the generation of power, 
 some to take from the habitants any land which might be found 
 necessary for a railroad right of way, some to change the place 
 and time at which the seigniorial dues should be payable, and 
 so on. The Special Seigniorial Court decided that all of these 
 reservations were illegal.* 
 
 Besides making these numerous reservations, it was custom- 
 ary for seigniors to insert in the deeds given to their habitants 
 various prohibitions, some of which were both legal and reason- 
 able, others clearly illegal or unreasonable. A common prohi- 
 bition was that which forbade trade with the redskins. Many 
 seigniors had, by their own title-deeds, been forbidden to allow 
 their seigniories to be made bases of trade with the Indians, 
 and were therefore justified in placing a similar prohibition in 
 the deeds of their dependents ; but others, although themselves 
 not forbidden to trade, were very ready to deny their habit- 
 
 1 Proceedings of the Special Seigniorial Court (1856), 68. 
 
 2 See below, p. 140. ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 468. 
 * Proceedings of the Special Seigniorial Court, 79-80.
 
 140 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 ants the privilege. This prohibition found consistent support 
 from the colonial authorities, whose aim it was to concen- 
 trate the fur traffic at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal : 
 they did not desire to see a trading station at every outlying 
 hamlet or cote. It may well be doubted, however, whether the 
 prohibition availed much in the long run ; for, when the habit- 
 ants were forbidden to do a little trading in their spare time, 
 they not uncommonly abandoned their farms and took them- 
 selves off to the wilderness to become coureurs-de-bois, beyond 
 the reach of both the royal and the seigniorial authorities. 
 
 Again, many seigniors inserted clauses in the deeds of their 
 dependents forbidding them to sell marketable timber, to saw 
 deals, to erect any mills, factories, or other works {jisines) moved 
 by water, wind, or steam, with various other interdictions of a like 
 nature. Most of these prohibitions made their appearance during 
 the period following the conquest ; and, although none of them 
 rested upon any legal basis, they seem in many cases to have 
 been respected by the habitants. In so far as they were en- 
 forced, such prohibitions assisted in retarding the industrial 
 development of the province. 
 
 Finally, there were several minor rights which some seigniors 
 stipulated for and some did not, and which some exacted at one 
 time and not at another. Among these was the droit de pecJie, 
 or the right of the seignior to one fish in every eleven caught by 
 his dependents.! Some writers have mentioned this as a gen- 
 eral and important exaction,^ whereas it appears to have been 
 insisted upon quite infrequently and never to have been re- 
 garded by the seigniors as of much account. When the habit- 
 ants fished for their own use, the seignior usually exacted 
 nothing ; but when they made a business of fishing for the 
 market, it was not uncommon for him to exact a hogshead 
 {barriqiie) or so per season in commutation of his droit de 
 peche? 
 
 1 On the origin, nature, and extent of this right in France, see Dufresnoy, His- 
 toire du Droit de Peche dans VAncien Droit Fran<;ais (1896). 
 
 2 For example, Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, ii. 48. 
 
 3 Of certain habitants in one seigniory who were engaged in the porpoise-fishing 
 industry, the seignior exacted one-tenth of the oil produced. See Edits et Ordon- 
 nances, ii. 541.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 141 
 
 In the same category may be placed the droit de chasse, or 
 the right of the seignior to hunt over the lands of his depend- 
 ents.^ Those who are familiar with the historical literature of 
 the old regime in France need not be reminded of the un- 
 reasonable and often outrageous way in which many French 
 seigniors were accustomed to take advantage of the hunting 
 right, by riding with large parties of friends over the growing 
 fields of the hapless censitaires, and destroying in an hour the 
 fruits of a season's toil. In French Canada the habitant. was 
 never subjected to any odious exaction of the divit de chasse. 
 Some seigniors claimed the privilege as an honorary right {droit 
 honorifiqiie^ ; but no one seems to have availed himself of it in 
 such a way as to give his habitants just ground for complaint. 
 The chase-loving Canadian seignior could, of course, find abun- 
 dant scope on the often too-extensive unconceded lands of his 
 seigniory. Upon these he had full liberty, in which he was 
 confirmed from time to time by decrees of the authorities 
 enjoining the habitants not to hunt on the unconceded lands 
 without the seignior's express permission.^ 
 
 Some of the seigniors claimed the right of establishing ferries 
 over rivers that ran through their seigniories, and of exacting 
 toll from passengers ; and occasionally a seignior leased this 
 privilege to some one who would provide a scow and act as 
 ferryman. The seignior's right in this matter does not seem to 
 have been called in question during the French period ; and 
 in connection with the abolition of the seigniorial system in 1854 
 claims for indemnity were based upon the loss of this ferry 
 privilege. The validity of such claims turned on the question 
 as to what rights a seignior possessed in the waters of his seign- 
 iory. In the case of navigable streams, he had no rights beyond 
 high-water mark, unless such were expressly given him by deed 
 from the crown ; but over the smaller, non-navigable streams, 
 as well as over the ponds and lakes within his seigniory, his 
 authority was complete. When a non-navigable stream divided 
 two seigniories, the littoral seigniors had jurisdiction to the 
 middle of the waterway. On the foregoing points the authori- 
 
 ^ L. Moyat, Etude Ilistorique, Critique, et Comparee sur le Droit de Chasse {\()od). 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 73, 384, 428; iii. 160, 263.
 
 142 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 ties in both France and Canada seem to have agreed ; but as to 
 the legal basis of the seignior's control of small streams and 
 lakes there is some difference of opinion. Some believe that his 
 right accrued to him as seignior, that it was an incident of 
 seigniorship ; others maintain that it belonged to him as a 
 judicial officer, as a seignior with powers of haute justice?- In 
 France the question was one of academic interest only ; in 
 Canada it had a tangible importance. After the conquest all 
 the judicial rights of the seigniors were taken away without 
 compensation; but in accordance with the pledge made in the 
 Treaty of Paris (1763) that all rights of property should be 
 respected by the new British suzerain s,^ their ordinary pro- 
 prietary rights were left intact. When, therefore, in 1854 the 
 proprietary rights of seigniors were taken from them with 
 compensation, the question was raised whether the seigniorial 
 rights over rivers were among the judicial rights of the seign- 
 iors, which had long since been abolished, or among the pro- 
 prietary rights, which had been preserved. This was one of 
 the most difficult points which the Special Seigniorial Court 
 found itself called upon to decide ; but it was finally held by a 
 majority of the justices that seigniorial rights over the smaller 
 streams were proprietary and not judicial in their nature.^ 
 
 The foregoing list does not completely exhaust the rights 
 occasionally claimed by the Canadian seignior; it comprises 
 only those which were exacted with some degree of frequency. 
 Here and there one finds a shred or two of evidence indicating 
 that a seignior laid claim to some other right, but such in- 
 stances are not numerous. Some few seigniors, for example, 
 appear to have claimed the right to offer their own grain and 
 cattle for sale to buyers a certain number of days in advance 
 of their habitants; the right to maintain tjanal slaughter-houses; 
 the right to keep for exclusive service in the seigniory a 
 banal bull, boar, or ram ; the right to keep a seigniorial dove- 
 cote;* the droit de jambage, or marital right; and various other 
 
 1 See the authorities cited in Mondelet, Observations, 34 ff. ^ gee below, p. 191. 
 
 8 Proceedings of the Special Seigniorial Court (1856), 68-73. 
 
 * The droit de colomhier v/3.s, by the Custom of Paris (articles Ixix, Ixx), recognized 
 as appertaining to all seigniors possessing more than fifty arpents of land. Cf. 
 VioUet, Histoire du Droit Civil Fran<;ais, 712.
 
 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS, 143 
 
 privileges.^ Although all these rights are mentioned in the 
 data of the French period, it is almost certain that little or no 
 serious attempt was made to enforce any of them, except per- 
 haps in very rare instances.^ It would be safe to hazard the 
 opinion that most of them were never exacted at all. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the burdens imposed upon the habitant 
 by the seignior of the old system in Canada were far from 
 onerous. To declare that they were "more nominal than real" ^ 
 seems scarcely justifiable in view of the general poverty of the 
 class upon which they were imposed ; they certainly were not 
 so regarded by the habitants themselves. Still, the Canadian 
 habitant was, in this respect, much better off than his proto- 
 type, the French censitaire. In all cases his obligations were 
 fixed with at least some degree of definiteness, and the method 
 of exaction was never harsh or cruel. From the most odious 
 incidents of the seigniorial system in France he was almost 
 entirely free. He was protected, moreover, not alone by the 
 letter and the spirit of the law, but by the administrative juris- 
 diction of the intendant, to whom he might appeal with little 
 expense and with reasonable hope of success whenever a 
 seigniorial exaction, though legal, seemed unjust or contrary 
 to public poHcy. 
 
 The Canadian habitant, though poor, seems never to have 
 become degraded and hopelessly dispirited like the peasant in 
 France. Various writers of the time commented upon his bon- 
 homie and his ability to make light of his troubles and difficulties. 
 In 1737, Hocquart sent to the minister a very interesting pen 
 portraiture of the Canadians, in the course of which he pointed 
 out that the habitants of New France were not " coarse and 
 boorish rustics " like the peasantry of the provinces at home, 
 but that they were well-dressed and displayed good manners.* 
 Their dweUings, built of timber or stone and whitewashed 
 on the outside, though usually small, were comfortable and 
 
 1 On the nature of these various rights in France, cf. Tocqueville, The Old 
 Regime and the Revolution, 326 ff. 
 
 2 See Sir J. M. Le Moine on " Tidbits of Feudal Customs in Canada," in his 
 Alaple Leaves, 4th series, 99 ff. 
 
 ^ Thwaites, Frattce in America, 132. 
 
 * Hocquart to Minister, November 8, 1737, Correspondance Generale,vo\.\\v\i.^o^.
 
 144 THE CORVEE AND OTHER EXACTIONS. 
 
 cleanly.^ Their daily fare, while plain, was nourishing and 
 always adequate. Lahontan, during his stay in the colony, was 
 impressed by the rude comfort in which the population of the 
 seigniories lived, and recorded his surprise at finding that " the 
 boors of these manours live with more ease and conveniency 
 than an infinity of the gentlemen in France." ^ Whatever criti- 
 cisms may be passed upon the seigniorial system as the em- 
 bodiment of an economic policy, it can scarcely be said with 
 truth that in New France it ever permitted the seigniors to op- 
 press or degrade the peasantry. 
 
 1 Kalm, Travels into North America {i']']2), ii. 241-242. Kalm visited New 
 France in 1749. 
 
 2 Lahontan, New Voyages (ed. Thwaites), i. 35.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 "Of all the phenomena of feudalism," writes Professor F. 
 W. Maitland, "none seems more essential than seigniorial jus- 
 tice ; " 1 and yet, as that distinguished student of institutional 
 history has pointed out, disproportionate stress has usually been 
 laid upon the military aspect of the seigniorial system to the 
 consequent neglect of the judicial. The exercise of jurisdic- 
 tion seems to be, above all else, the distinguishing mark of a 
 seigniorial system of land tenure.^ 
 
 During the earliest period of French operations in Canada, — 
 that is to say, from the first establishment of a permanent settle- 
 ment at Quebec by Champlain in 1608 down to the formation 
 of the Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, — the 
 administration of justice was vested by the French crown in the 
 hands of whoever happened to hold the nominal post of " viceroy 
 and lieutenant-general of New France " ; and by each viceroy, 
 in turn, it was deputed to Champlain. Although the sparseness 
 of the population during this period might have seemed to ren- 
 der the establishment of any regular tribunal unnecessary, 
 Champlain, as we learn from his writings, found it advisable 
 to promulgate various ordinances for the governance of his 
 somewhat unruly settlers, and to expel those who failed to give 
 obedience. Moreover, a few years later he established the first 
 regular court of the colony, later known as the court of the Pr6- 
 vote at Quebec,^ and modelled upon the court of similar name in 
 France. As the early registers of this court have not come 
 
 ^ Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), 258. 
 
 2 On the administration of feudal justice in France, see Fustel de Coulanges on 
 " La Justice dans la Societe Feodale," in Revue des Deux Mondes, xcii. 274-298 
 (March, 187 1). 
 
 ^ On the composition and powers of this court, see Doutre and Lareau, Histoire 
 Generate du Droit Civil Canadien, 15 ff. 
 
 MS
 
 146 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 down to us, it is impossible to tell anything about the number 
 or the character of the cases which came before it ; but it is 
 certain that down to 1627 there was no exercise of seigniorial 
 jurisdiction, for only three grants of seigniories had been made 
 prior to that year, and none of these contained any concession 
 of judicial power.^ 
 
 During the supremacy of the Company of One Hundred 
 Associates, from 1627 to 1663, the court of the Prevote con- 
 tinued in existence ; but in 1647 a council, commonly known as 
 the Old Council {Tancien conseil), was organized, consisting of 
 the governor, the superior of the Jesuits in the colony, and 
 some prominent colonists named by the former. From this 
 time on, appeals might be carried from the court to the council ; 
 but how far this appellate jurisdiction was exercised it is im- 
 possible to tell, for, although the Old Council undoubtedly 
 kept records of its proceedings, these have never been found.^ 
 What is more important for our purpose, however, is the fact 
 that during this period more than sixty seigniorial grants were 
 made by the company, and in almost every instance judicial 
 rights were given to the seigniors.^ In no case was the extent 
 of judicial authority precisely defined; but in every grant pro- 
 vision was made that appeals should lie from the seigniorial 
 courts (whenever such should have been established) to the 
 court of the Pr6v6te. It was in this interval, therefore, that 
 the colonial hierarchy of courts first took on a definite form. 
 
 It seems to have been intended that all cases should, in the 
 first instance, come before the seigniorial courts, and that from 
 them appeals should be carried to the court of the Prevote, 
 from this to the Old Council, and from the council to the king. 
 As a matter of fact, however, there was apparently, before 1663, 
 no serious attempt to establish courts in the seigniories ; for 
 many of those who received seigniorial grants never came out 
 to the colony, and of the remainder only a few seem to have 
 taken possession of their lands. 
 
 ^ Cf. Titres des Seigneuries, 89, 343, 412. 
 
 2 It is highly probable that these registers were destroyed by the fire which 
 burned the intendant's palace at Quebec in 1713. See Chauveau, N'otice sur la Pub- 
 lication des Kegistres du Conseil Souverain de Quebec (1885), 61. 
 
 2 See above, ch. ii.
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 1 47 
 
 It is not till after 1663 that one encounters definite evidence 
 that seigniorial jurisdiction was being exercised. Most of those 
 who received seigniories after that year were invested with 
 judicial rights, and some began to exercise them. Not every 
 colonial seignior, however, possessed the right of private juris- 
 diction ; indeed, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that in 
 Canada the possession of a seigniory was not ipso facto an evi- 
 dence of private judicial authority,^ In France, as various 
 writers have pointed out, property and jurisdiction were usually, 
 during the feudal era, inseparable;^ although several of the 
 coiitumes explicitly declare that judicial powers were not nec- 
 essary incidents of the possession of a fief.^ In Canada, on the 
 other hand, the possession of a seigniory did not in itself carry 
 any jurisdiction : the latter could be obtained only by express 
 grant. 
 
 Judicial power, when given to the seignior, might be conveyed 
 in one or more of three different degrees, — that is, the right 
 of high, of low, or of middle jurisdiction {Jiaute, moyenne, ou 
 basse justice) might be granted him. Usually all three degrees 
 were given together; but grants of middle and low justice, 
 or of low alone, were not uncommon.* It should be made 
 clear that the degree of jurisdiction was not proportioned to 
 the extent of the seigniory : in some of the smallest grants the 
 widest degrees of judicial power were given, while in a few of 
 the most extensive only the right of low jurisdiction was be- 
 
 1 A close examination of the seigniorial titles seems to confirm the statement of 
 Garneau {^Histoire du Canada, i. 166) that a grant of jurisdiction "almost invari- 
 ably " accompanied the grant of a seigniory. This is certainly much nearer the 
 truth than the assertion of a recent writer (Douglas, Old France in the Netv World, 
 236) that " in some few cases " judicial powers were possessed by the seigniors of 
 Canada. Among seigniories sans justice may be mentioned those of Gentilly, Vieux- 
 pont, Jacques Cartier, Isle St. Joseph, Pointe du Lac, Boucher (adjoining Labadie), 
 St. Michel, and St. Jean. See Titres des Seigneuries, 12, 85, 88, 103, 120, 344. 
 
 2 "The administration of justice both in the old and new fiefs, was a right in- 
 herent in the very fief itself, — a lucrative right which constituted a part of it" (Mon- 
 tesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, book xx. ch. 20). 
 
 ^ " P'ief, ressort, et justice n'ont rien de commun ensemble." On this point, see 
 Loisel, Institutes Coutuinieres, ii. 271; and Viollet, Ilistoiredu Droit Civil Fran(,uis, 
 646. 
 
 * On the administration of seigniorial justice, cf. Doutre and Lareau, Ilistoire 
 Cinerale du Droit Civil Canadien, 133 ff.
 
 148 SEICmORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 stowed. In some cases the seigniorial grant was first made 
 without any judicial rights whatever, these being given subse- 
 quently on augmentation of the original grant. In a few 
 instances the right of low jurisdiction only was conferred with 
 the original concession ; then later, when the holding had been 
 increased either by purchase or by additional grants from the 
 crown, the rights of middle and high jurisdiction were added. 
 All these cases, however, ought to be regarded as exceptional ; 
 for in the great majority of seigniorial title-deeds the grants 
 appear to have been made " in full property and seigniory, 
 with the rights of high, middle, and low jurisdiction " {en toute 
 propriete et seigneurie, avec les droits de haute, moyenne, et 
 basse Justice). Seigniories appear to have been granted in 
 these terms unless some special circumstance seemed to dictate 
 a departure from the usual course ; but it is not easy to say 
 what prompted the making of exceptions in isolated cases. 
 
 The grant of the right of high jurisdiction {haute Justice) 
 gave the seignior power to deal with all criminal cases, includ- 
 ing those punished by death, mutilation, or other corporal 
 penalty, with the exception only of such crimes as were deemed 
 to be perpetrated directly against the royal person or property. 
 These were such crimes as Ihe niajeste divijte et Jiuniaine, 
 treason, counterfeiting the royal signature, seal, or coinage, 
 unlawfully bearing arms, or taking part in seditious enterprises 
 or assemblies. In civil cases the authority of the seignior 
 possessing this degree of jurisdiction was without limit. He 
 had power to fine or imprison, to award damages, to order 
 amendes honorables to be made by his habitants to himself 
 or to one another, to banish obnoxious persons from his seign- 
 iory, to order the retention in stocks or even the branding of 
 incorrigibles, and to publish all such regulations for the gover- 
 nance of the habitants as were not inconsistent with the Custom 
 of Paris and the laws of the colony. When his habitants were 
 convicted of offences which legally entailed confiscation of 
 property, whether real or personal, he had the right to seize 
 and appropriate it ; but in the case of confiscations ordered by 
 the royal courts for offences against the crown, the forfeited 
 property went to the crown and not to the seignior within
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 149 
 
 whose domain it lay. This rule was in full accord with the 
 well-known feudal maxim that " he who condemns the person 
 confiscates the property " {jjid confisqiie le corps conjisque les 
 biens). 
 
 To the seignior with powers of high jurisdiction appertained 
 also the possession of all stray cattle and other animals found 
 within the limits of his seigniory. On finding such estray, 
 a habitant was under obligation to deliver it to the seignior 
 within twenty-four hours, on pain of fine ; but the seignior, on 
 his part, was obliged to make public proclamation at the door 
 of the parish church for three consecutive Sundays, announcing 
 that he held such an estray. If, within the space of forty days 
 from the date of the first publication, the rightful claimant did 
 not appear and " pay all lawful costs and expenses, " the ani- 
 mal became the property of the seignior in his capacity of 
 high justiciary of the seigniory, and this without any compen- 
 sation to the finder. 
 
 To the seignior with high judicial powers reverted also the 
 ownership of all e7i censive lands and all lands en arrihe-fief 
 left without lawful heirs, as well as of all such lands as did not 
 continue to be held in strict accordance with the terms of the 
 original grant. He was likewise entitled to all flotsam and 
 jetsam found in the waters of the seigniory or washed ashore, 
 all treasure trove, and all bona vacantia. In the case of treas- 
 ure trove, however, one-half went to the actual finder if the 
 treasure was discovered by him within the limits of his own 
 grant ; if it was found by one habitant on the land of another, 
 the finder received one-third, the owner of the land one-third, 
 and the seignior the remaining third ; if it was found on the 
 land of the seignior, the finder was rewarded with one-third of 
 the value, and the seignior took the rest. Furthermore, as 
 has been pointed out, ^ the seignior, by virtue of his possession 
 of high jurisdiction, claimed control over all unnavigable 
 streams and waters within his seigniory, together with the 
 exclusive right of establishing ferries across the same. In 
 theory, at least, the grant of high jurisdiction conveyed very 
 extensive judicial rights upon those seigniors who obtained it. 
 
 ^ Above, p. 142.
 
 150 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 The seignior whose jurisdiction was limited to a grant of moy- 
 en7ie justice had authority to take cognizance of all civil actions 
 in which the amount in dispute did not exceed sixty sols pavisis} 
 and of all criminal causes in which the awardable penalty did 
 not exceed the same sum. If the amount in dispute in a civil 
 cause exceeded sixty sols, or if the offence were one demanding 
 a punishment more severe than the imposition of a fine of this 
 amount, the whole matter was handed over to the jurisdiction of 
 the nearest royal court. The seignior with rights of middle juris- 
 diction had authority to order the arrest of an offender; but he 
 was under obligation to give such person a hearing within twenty- 
 four hours after his arrest, and at this hearing he was to decide 
 whether or not he had jurisdiction. Since, however, there was no 
 habeas corpus procedure in the colony, or anything correspond- 
 ing to it, there was no security for the enforcement of this rule 
 in behalf of a prisoner. It is, of course, true that the friends of 
 an offender held in custody without a hearing might make appeal 
 to the council at Quebec ; but from this body redress could be 
 had only after an investigation of the case, and this took some 
 time. If the seignior deemed an offence worthy of more severe 
 punishment than he was empowered to inflict, and sent the case 
 before a royal court, he was entitled to be reimbursed for the 
 costs of the arrest and transport of the prisoner, and to be 
 paid sixty sols parisis out of the fine imposed by the royal 
 court. 
 
 The seignior possessing the rights of middle jurisdiction had 
 power to appoint tutors or curators for minors or persons 7io}t 
 compos me?itis, to determine the compensation to be paid them, 
 and, in general, to supervise the property of all dependents in 
 guardianship. He also had authority to decide disputed ques- 
 tions of measurement and acreage (faire viesiirer et arpenter\ 
 and to determine the boundaries (bornage) of lands within his 
 seigniory. 
 
 The few seigniors who possessed the rights of low jurisdic- 
 tion only could take cognizance of disputed matters in which 
 the amount at issue did not exceed sixty sols, and in criminal 
 cases could award a penalty not exceeding ten sols. The pos- 
 
 1 That is, in money of France (see above, p. 92).
 
 SEIGmORTAL JUSTICE. 151 
 
 session of this degree of jurisdiction merely gave the seignior 
 power to settle trivial disputes between the habitants, or between 
 himself and his dependents, regarding the amount of seigniorial 
 dues. He was bound by the rule regarding immediate hearings 
 for prisoners ; when he sent a case before a royal court he 
 was reimbursed for his necessary costs, and, if a fine was im- 
 posed, he received ten sols as his share.^ 
 
 These distinctions in degree of jurisdiction were of little or 
 no importance in Canada, for the reason that in the great ma- 
 jority of cases the seignior who had jurisdiction at all had it in 
 all three degrees. Every seignior possessing judicial power was 
 supposed, before beginning to exercise it, to provide a court- 
 room iaiiditoire) in or adjoining his manor-house, together with 
 a prison " on the ground flour and in a dry place." He was 
 also under obligation to provide the necessary court officials 
 (a bailiff, a court clerk, and a crier), and, when he did not pre- 
 side in person, to appoint a seigniorial justice.^ As a matter of 
 fact, however, those Canadian seigniors who exercised their ju- 
 dicial rights did not provide any special court-room, but used the 
 living room of the manor-house for the purpose ; and in a very 
 few cases only did they provide prisons. In some of the larger 
 seigniories court officials were named by the seignior, and were 
 paid small compensations whenever there was work to be done ; 
 and in a few seigniories regular seigniorial justices were ap- 
 pointed, as may be seen from the wording of decrees ordering 
 such officials to hold sessions at frequent intervals, not to take 
 fees from claimants before them, and so on.^ After the conquest, 
 Governor Carleton declared that under the French rule no 
 seigniorial justice could be appointed without the approval of 
 the royal authorities.^ In the records of the Superior Council 
 will be found a few instances in which the appointment of a 
 seigniorial justice was thus confirmed, but it does not appear 
 that such confirmation was regarded as indispensable.^ If the 
 sanction of the council was given to all seigniorial judicial 
 
 ^ The precise limits of the three degrees of jurisdiction are very clearly set forth in 
 Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Generale du Droit Civil Canadien, 1 33-1 36. 
 2 Ibid. 135. 8 Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 118. 
 
 * See below, p. 157. ^ Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 23, 566.
 
 152 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 appointments, some of these confirmations cannot have been 
 recorded; for the number of seigniorial justices was certainly- 
 more than the number of recorded confirmations.-^ 
 
 Still, the total number of seigniors who appointed judges was 
 comparatively small ; in most cases in which jurisdiction was 
 exercised the seignior appears to have performed the work 
 himself. In such instances seigniorial justice was administered 
 in rough-and-ready fashion, with little regard for the formalities 
 of the law : the average Canadian seignior might as well 
 have been asked to administer the Twelve Tables as to follow 
 the Custom of Paris in his decisions. Ordinarily the disputants 
 or offenders were called by the seignior to the manor-house, 
 where, after a proceeding which partook more of the nature of 
 a conference than a trial, some satisfactory settlement was usu- 
 ally effected. Most of the matters which came before the 
 seigniors in their judicial capacity were concerned with disputes 
 about boundaries of lands or seigniorial dues, with petty squabbles 
 between the habitants, or, frequently, with the division of per- 
 sonal property among heirs. The seigniors very rarely under- 
 took to exercise their powers of high jurisdiction : civil and 
 criminal cases of any importance were almost invariably left 
 to the royal tribunals to be dealt with by them ab initio. Al- 
 though scores of Canadian seigniors had legal power to impose 
 even the death penalty, there is no record that such sentence 
 was ever pronounced in a seigniorial court. 
 
 The reasons for the failure of most seigniors to exercise their 
 judicial powers to any very important degree are not difficult 
 to find. In France seigniorial jurisdiction was a source of 
 substantial profit ; there, according to various writers, the profits 
 of seigniorial jurisdiction amounted to from one-twentieth to 
 one-tenth of the gross revenue of the seigniory .^ In Canada, on 
 the contrary, owing to the sparseness of the population very little 
 profit could be hoped for by the seignior from fines, fees, and 
 other incidents of jurisdiction. If any seignior had undertaken 
 to provide himself with the full paraphernalia of jurisdiction, — 
 
 ^ Cugnet ( Traite de la Loi des Fiefs, 53) states that the judges of the royal courts 
 had the right to inspect all seigniorial courts within their districts. 
 2 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, 341.
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 1 53 
 
 a court-room, jail, officials, and so on, — he would certainly 
 have found himself exercising jurisdiction at a loss. It was not 
 that the people were disinclined to litigation ; on the contrary, 
 a chronic disposition toward litigiousness was one of the most 
 marked characteristics of the Canadian habitant. The Norman 
 colonist seems to have been naturally quarrelsome,^ and the long 
 winters afforded him plenty of leisure to indulge in his com- 
 bative proclivities.^ Moreover, the loose way in which land 
 boundaries were delimited, and the somewhat indefinite status 
 of many seigniorial obligations, gave the habitant favorable 
 opportunities for squabbling both with his neighbor and with 
 his lord.^ Talon, in 1667, roundly rebuked the population of 
 New France for their lack of harmony and their disposition to 
 invoke the aid of the higher authorities in the settlement of 
 trivial questions at issue, and strongly urged them to settle dif- 
 ferences of opinion among themselves and in friendly fashion.* 
 As most of these difficulties were of such nature that their 
 settlement cost the seigniors a good deal of time and patience 
 without affording any tangible profit in return, it is no 
 wonder that the seigniorial judicial powers were so seldom 
 exercised. 
 
 Another reason for the infrequent use of the power may be 
 found in the fact that the decision of a seigniorial court was 
 in no case final. When a grant of jurisdiction was made to a 
 seignior, it was accompanied by the provision that in all cases 
 appeal to the royal courts of the colony should be allowed. Be- 
 fore the establishment of the royal courts, appeals went directly 
 to the council at Quebec ; but when, in course of time, royal 
 district courts were established at Quebec, Montreal, and Three 
 Rivers, each in charge of a royal justice, appeals were first 
 taken to these, then to the intendant and council, and finally to 
 the king. From the time the colony was taken under the direct 
 
 ^ As one writer aptly expresses it, the Norman settler had "beaucoup de chaleur 
 dans la discussion des interets privees, et de calme dans celle des interets publics " 
 (Bouchette, Britisk Dominions in North America, i. 414, note). 
 
 2 Gaspe {Les Anciens Canadiens) gives some interesting portrayals of French- 
 Canadian life in the eighteenth century. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 40. 
 
 * Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 30.
 
 154 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 control of the crown, the royal intention seems to have been to 
 create a hierarchy of courts, — the seigniorial courts to admin- 
 ister justice in the first instance, and the royal courts to be 
 primarily courts of appeal. " It is our will," declares a royal 
 edict of 1667, " that an appeal shall lie from the seigniorial juris- 
 dictions which are within the limits of our Prevote at Quebec, to 
 the said Prevote, and from the said Prevote to our said council 
 at Quebec, which we prohibit from receiving any immediate 
 appeal from the said seigniorial jurisdictions . . . and with re- 
 spect to the other seigniorial jurisdictions which are not within 
 the limits of the said Prevote of Quebec, the appeals from them 
 shall be brought immediately before the said council until such 
 time as we shall have established other royal jurisdictions." ^ 
 In accordance with this poHcy, it was ordained in the decree 
 which established a royal court at Three Rivers in 1680 that 
 appeals should no longer be taken from the seigniorial courts in 
 that district to the council at Quebec, but to the newly estab- 
 lished royal court, from which, of course, the issue might be 
 further carried to the council.^ 
 
 The establishment of the royal courts gave many of the neigh- 
 boring seigniors an excuse for discontinuing their own jurisdiction. 
 When the royal court was first set up at Montreal, the seigniors 
 of the island at once prayed to be relieved of the right of exercis- 
 ing high and middle jurisdiction, but to be allowed the right of 
 low jurisdiction in order that they might on occasion be able to 
 enforce the payment of dues within their seigniories. An ordi- 
 nance depriving them of the two higher degrees of jurisdiction 
 and confirming them in the enjoyment of the lowest one was ac- 
 cordingly issued.^ Some time earlier the jurisdiction of the Jesu- 
 its in their seigniories at Sillery and Three Rivers had, at their 
 own request, been suppressed by a decree of the Superior Coun- 
 cil, which ordered that cases arising in the first-named seigniory 
 should be taken in the first instance before the royal court at 
 Quebec and those in the latter seigniory before the royal court 
 at Three Rivers.* 
 
 1 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 237, § viii. 2 JUd, 242. 
 
 8 Ibid. 342-346 (July, 1 7 14). 
 
 * Ibid. iii. 152-153 (October 24, 1707).
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 1 5 5 
 
 Feudal jurisdiction has generally been looked upon as a usur- 
 pation by seigniors of a sovereign function, as the logical result 
 of a weak central power. In France the origin of private justice 
 was, in the earlier stages of feudal development, undoubtedly 
 connected with the weakness of the monarchy ; but in Canada 
 we see a strong central power — the strongest perhaps that ever 
 exerted its strength in the New World — endeavoring to estab- 
 lish a system of private jurisdiction, to decentralize the admin- 
 istration of justice, and to force the seigniors to assume judicial 
 functions which most of them wished to discard. Obviously 
 the explanation is that, with the preservation of the right of 
 appeal in every case to the royal courts, the central authority 
 had no reason to fear the development of undue power by those 
 who exercised jurisdiction in the first instance. As Parkman 
 has very aptly remarked, " Louis XIV liked the feudal system, 
 but only with its teeth drawn." ^ 
 
 Although the records of cases heard in the various seigniorial 
 courts have not been preserved, it would seem that the vast 
 majority of cases were brought in the first instance either before 
 the royal courts at Quebec, Three Rivers, or Montreal, or before 
 the council at Quebec; for one finds in the registers of these 
 courts a formidable collection of judgments dealing with all 
 sorts of cases, from the most important to the most trivial.^ 
 The seigniorial courts seem to have limited their jurisdiction, for 
 the most part, to cases concerning the seigniorial dues and 
 obligations ; and it is remarkable how comparatively few were 
 the appeals from these judgments of the seigniors to the 
 royal courts. The seignior, it is true, knew very little about 
 law or procedure ; but he knew his suitors, and his disposition 
 of the cases which came before him was usually a satisfactory 
 one. 
 
 In some of the seigniorial courts there were, naturally enough, 
 just causes of complaint, and even abuses ; but these the authori- 
 ties did not hesitate to correct when their attention was drawn 
 to them. To this end, various decrees dealing with the seign- 
 
 ^ Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, Introduction. 
 
 2 Some of these are printed in Perrault, Exiraits ou Precedents tires des Registres 
 ■de la Prevoste de Quebec,
 
 156 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 iorial courts were issued from time to time. Thus, in 1664, on 
 the representation of the attorney-general that certain abuses 
 existed in the seigniorial courts,^ decrees were issued by the 
 council prohibiting " all inferior judges from taking any pay- 
 ment or fees from parties to a suit under pain of being treated 
 as extortioners, saving, however, the right of these officials to 
 receive salaries from those who have named them to their posi- 
 tions," and prohibiting them also "from exercising any jurisdic- 
 tion until they shall have taken the oath which is required to be 
 taken by the royal judges in their jurisdiction." This ordinance 
 provided further that persons complaining of excessive costs 
 levied in a seigniorial court might appeal to the royal courts to 
 have these reduced.^ Again, in 1678 an edict was promulgated 
 fixing definitely the amount of charges which might be exacted 
 by judicial officials for any service.^ Moreover, in several 
 cases the intendant intervened to secure the more prompt and 
 effective administration of justice in the seigniorial courts. In 
 1705, for example, Raudot issued a decree in which, after 
 declaring that according to his information the seigniorial 
 justices of Batiscan and Champlain held hearings only once 
 each month and compelled the habitants, when they wanted 
 special hearings between times, to pay for the same, he ordered 
 these judges to hold court at least once every week (in Batiscan 
 on Wednesdays and in Champlain on Saturdays), and forbade 
 the practice of exacting charges for special sessions.^ This is 
 only one of the numerous similar interventions that might be 
 instanced. 
 
 On the whole, the administration of justice in both the seign- 
 iorial and the royal courts seems to have been carried on with 
 promptness, impartiality, and economy. The difference in this 
 respect between conditions in Old and New France attracted the 
 attention of Lahontan, who commented upon it in his usual 
 facetious vein. " I will not say," he wrote, " that the Goddess 
 
 1 The attorney-general had general supervision over the judicial administration of 
 the colony. The position was at this time held by Jean Bourdon, who had been ap- 
 pointed to the post on the recommendation of Bishop Laval. See Gosselin, Jean 
 Bourdon (Quebec, 1904), ch. xiii. 
 
 2 Edits et Ordonnances, ii. 22 ff. 
 
 8 Ibid. i. 99 ff. * Ibid. iii. 118.
 
 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 1 5 7 
 
 of Justice is more chaste and impartial here than in France, but 
 at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply. In Canada 
 we do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of 
 attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not infest 
 Canada yet. Everybody pleads his own cause. Our Themis is 
 prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges." ^ 
 This is, in truth, very modest praise ; but such evidence as may 
 be drawn from the comments of other contemporary writers 
 seems to indicate that maladministration of justice was never an 
 important ground of complaint by the people. No one can 
 read the numerous judgments of the intendants without being 
 impressed with the apparently earnest desire of these officials 
 to be fair to all parties concerned ; and the frequency with 
 which their intervention seems to have been sought by seign- 
 iors and habitants alike bespeaks a confidence in their 
 impartiality. 
 
 It is, of course, true that possibilities of injustice lay in the 
 system of private jurisdiction ; but these do not appear to have 
 been reahzed. This point was very well stated by Governor 
 Guy Carleton in one of his despatches to the British authorities. 
 " Some of the privileges contained in the seigniorial grants," 
 he wrote, " appear to convey dangerous powers into the hands 
 of the seigniors, but upon a more minute enquiry these are found 
 to be really little less than ideal. The haute, moyeiine, et basse 
 justice are terms of high import, but even under the French 
 government were so corrected as to prove of little significance 
 to the proprietors; for besides that they could appoint no judge 
 without the approbation of the government, there lay an appeal 
 from all the private to the royal jurisdictions in every matter 
 exceeding half a crown. It could not therefore be productive of 
 abuse, and as the keeping of their own judges became much too 
 burthensome for the scanty incomes of the Canadian seigniors, it 
 was grown into so general a disuse that there were hardly three 
 of them in the whole province at the time of the conquest."^ 
 
 ^ Lahontan, Nouveatix Voyages (1705), i. 21, cited by Parkman, The Old 
 Regime in Canada, ii. 68. 
 
 2 Carleton to Shelburne, April 12, 1768, in State Paper Office, America and West 
 Indies, vol. cccxxvi, No. 33.
 
 158 SEIGNIORIAL JUSTICE. 
 
 Almost precisely the same view is expressed by Garneau. 
 " All the seigniories with very few exceptions," he writes, " pos- 
 sessed the redoubtable right of high, mean, and low jurisdiction 
 which was acquired by express grant from the king. This was 
 in America an anachronism at once of time and place. The 
 seigniorial judges and the officers of their courts were obliged 
 to obtain for themselves the sanction of the royal authorities, to 
 whom, moreover, they were obliged to make oath that they would 
 fulfil their duties faithfully and well. But in addition to this 
 there were added other shackles, with the result that scarcely 
 a seignior could be found desirous of exercising his privileges." ^ 
 
 The policy of permitting private jurisdiction to be exercised 
 in the colony did not commend itself to the new British authori- 
 ties ; hence, while they were not unwilling to perpetuate the 
 French system of civil law, they gave no consideration to the 
 advisability of permitting even the theory of seigniorial judicial 
 authority to remain. During the period of military rule (1760- 
 1764), all cases were brought in the first instance before the 
 military courts which were established in different parts of the 
 colony.^ When military rule gave place to a system of civil 
 government, one of the early acts of the new administration was 
 to establish a new system of courts in which no provision for 
 the exercise of any private jurisdiction was made.^ The judi- 
 cial prerogatives of the seigniors were in this way quietly elimi- 
 nated. No compensation seems to have been claimed by them, 
 and none was granted. The attempt of the French crown to 
 establish a system of private justice in New France had failed 
 signally ; and the chief cause of failure seems to be found in 
 the simple fact that private jurisdiction could not, except in a 
 very few cases, be made to pay its way. 
 
 1 Garneau, Histoire du Canada, i. 173-174. Garneau declares (^Ilid. 174) that 
 the king forbade the granting of seigniories avec justice after 1714; but I have 
 found no trace of any such prohibition. At any rate, seigniories continued to be 
 granted with judicial powers after that date, and these grants were readily ratified by 
 the crown. 
 
 "^ Suite, Le Regime Militaire, ijbo-iyb^, in Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings, 
 1905, Appendix A. 
 
 ^ Order in council of September 17, 1764, Ordinances made for the Province of 
 Quebec by the Governor-in-Council of the said Province since the Establishtnent of 
 the Civil Government (1767), 9-10.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 The three foregoing chapters have been devoted to a descrip- 
 tion of the various rights through the exercise of which the 
 seigniors might hope to derive some emolument. Some of 
 these rights, like the cens et rentes and the lods et ventes, were 
 substantial and lucrative ; others, like the banalities and the 
 judicial powers, afforded little profit except under the most 
 favorable circumstances. In every case the amount of emolu- 
 ment derived depended upon the stage of development which 
 the seigniory had attained ; and this was gauged very accu- 
 rately by the population within its limits. 
 
 The Canadian seignior, however, like his prototype in France, 
 possessed a number of privileges of a purely honorary nature, 
 which gave him some prestige but no profit whatever. On the 
 contrary, they were frequently a source of expense to him ; for 
 they made it necessary that he should maintain a correspond- 
 ing dignity, which was, unfortunately, quite often beyond his 
 means. Some of these honorary privileges he had as seignior, 
 others because he had either inherited rank in the noblesse or 
 received it as the reward of a successful administration and 
 development of his seigniory. 
 
 Among the honorary privileges possessed by the seignior as 
 seignior, was the right to receive the fealty and homage of each 
 of his habitants upon the occasion of the latter's first entry 
 upon his holding and at every subsequent mutation of owner- 
 ship. The ceremony took place at the manor-house, and was 
 similar to that performed by the seignior himself to the repre- 
 sentative of the crown at Quebec.^ Again, on the first day of 
 
 1 When the inhabitants failed to render their fealty and homage, the seignior 
 could obtain an ordinance compelling them to perform this ceremony (see Edits et 
 Ordonnances, ii. 595). An excellent description of the ceremony is given in William 
 Kirby's Chien d^Or. See also above, pp. 56-57.
 
 l6o THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 May, the habitants were bound to appear before the seigniorial 
 manor-house and plant a May-pole near the door. The occasion 
 was made a gala day by them, and especially by the younger 
 folks, who gathered in holiday attire and spent the day in 
 dancing and games, while the seignior showed his appreciation 
 of the honor by a liberal dispensation of refreshments.^ It 
 seems hardly possible that the habitants could have looked upon 
 this exaction as a burden ; and yet on at least one occasion they 
 petitioned the intendant for the discharge of the obligation, 
 and with the consent of the seignior were relieved from further 
 performance of it.^ 
 
 In virtue of his position, moreover, the seignior was entitled 
 to a certain precedence and honor in the religious services of the 
 parish. As there seemed to be some difference of opinion be- 
 tween the seigniors and the cures as to what honorary rights 
 pertained to the former, a decree of the council, issued in 1709, 
 endeavored to make the matter clear. This edict provided that 
 the only seignior entitled to honors in any parish church should 
 be the one in whose territory the church was erected. For his 
 use a special pew was to be prepared " in the most honorable 
 place," that is to say, on the right side of the church and at a 
 distance of four feet from the altar railing {bahistre) ; this pew, 
 as the decree went on to provide with an elaboration of detail, 
 was to be of the same length as those used by the ordinary lay- 
 men, and was not to be more than double the depth. The 
 seignior was in all cases to be the first layman to approach the 
 sacred bread at the Eucharist, and in his absence this honor 
 was to be accorded to any of his children over the age of sixteen. 
 At the special religious fetes he was to be the first to approach 
 the altar to receive the tokens of the day, as, for example, the 
 ashes on Ash Wednesday or the palms on Palm Sunday ; and in 
 all rehgious processions he was to take place immediately after 
 the cure. On his decease his remains might be interred beneath 
 the church, and even the determination of the exact spot of burial 
 was provided for by the edict. The honors and privileges to be 
 
 1 An interesting description of the May-pole ceremony is given by Gaspe in his 
 Les Anciens Canadietis, ch. xvii. 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 132.
 
 THE SEIGISriORTAL NOBLESSE. i6l 
 
 accorded to the wife and children of a seignior were also mi- 
 nutely specified, to the end that no future misunderstandings 
 might arise.^ 
 
 Finally, the seignior was entitled to the general deference and 
 respect of his dependents, who were supposed to salute him re- 
 spectfully on meeting him, to give his vehicle the right of way, 
 to remain standing when in his presence unless requested to sit, 
 and in general to treat him with that polished deference which 
 the men of the old regime were wont to yield to their social supe- 
 riors. Naturally enough, matters of this sort were closely related 
 to the wealth and personal dignity of the individual seignior; 
 and in Canada these qualities were frequently lacking. Too often 
 the seignior was as poor as the average habitant; not infrequently 
 he was a man of toil, striving hard to make both ends meet, liv- 
 ing a life little removed from that of his habitants, and attaching 
 very little dignity to his office or position. 
 
 Although it has been the custom of some writers to use the 
 terms " seigniors " and " noblesse " interchangeably ,2 it should 
 be emphasized at this point that not all the Canadian seigniors 
 were members of the aristocracy. In speaking of France it is 
 approximately correct to say that a seignior was always a mem- 
 ber of the noblesse, but in speaking of Canada this use of the 
 terms is clearly misleading. The possession of a fief, or seign- 
 iory, in New France gave no noble status whatever : the com- 
 moner who received a colonial fief remained a commoner. 
 Some seigniors, it is true, received rank in the noblesse, but in 
 every case by special letters patent from the crown and never 
 as an incident of their tenure. 
 
 From the beginning, the French government apparently in- 
 tended to estabhsh in the colony some prototype of the no- 
 blesse at home. La Roche, it will be remembered, was in 1598 
 authorized to create " chatellenies, earldoms, viscountships, 
 baronies, and other dignities," and the Company of One Hun- 
 dred Associates numbered among its multitude of semi-sovereign 
 privileges that of granting " such titles and honors ... as the 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnattces, ii. 1 54-156. 
 
 " Eg., Coffin, The Province of Quebec and the Early American Revobciion, ch. i; 
 Thwaites, Erance in America, 133.
 
 1 62 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 Associates may deem proper" ; ^ but neither La Roche nor the 
 company seems to have exercised any of these rights. Patents 
 conferring rank m the noblesse were issued directly by the 
 crown, though most of them, it is true, came to the colony 
 as the result of recommendations made to the king or the minis- 
 ter by the colonial authorities. As such patents of nobility 
 were never granted in Canada except to the owners of seignior- 
 ies, it will be seen that, while the Canadian seignior was by 
 no means always a noble, the Canadian noble was always a 
 seignior.^ In France just the reverse was true. 
 
 Although the noblesse of New France was never a very 
 numerous body, it included representatives of almost every 
 rank, foremost among whom were the two counts, Jean Talon, 
 Comte d'Orsainville, and Francois Berthelot, Comte de St. 
 Laurent. Talon, the first active intendant of New France, 
 came to the colony in September, 1665,^ at the beginning of a 
 considerable movement of immigration to the domains of France 
 in the New World. As he was under instructions to take 
 special interest in the reception and settlement of the incoming 
 colonists, he at once proceeded to act upon the suggestion of 
 the minister that he should have a substantial area of land 
 cleared each year in order that settlers might be set to the work 
 of cultivation as soon as they arrived.* A few weeks after his 
 arrival at Quebec, Talon decided to establish three villages, and 
 chose as locations certain lands in the seigniory of Notre Dame 
 des Anges, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence just below 
 Quebec. This seigniory had some years previously (1626) been 
 granted to the Jesuits, who now protested against the intendant's 
 plan.^ Talon pointed out to them, however, that, in the forty 
 years during which the seigniory had been in Jesuit hands, only 
 a small part of it had been settled ; and he further called their 
 attention to the decree of 1663, which provided for the retrench- 
 ment to the crown of all seigniorial grants that had been left 
 
 1 See above, ch. ii. 
 
 2 There were, of course, several members of the French noblesse who served in 
 Canada as officers of the forces, and who were not seigniors. 
 
 2 Chapais, yi?a« Talon, 62. * Ibid. 92. 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 53. A copy of the Jesuit protest, together with the in- 
 tendant's reply, is printed in Chapais,y^a« Talon, Appendix.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 163 
 
 uncleared and uncultivated.^ The villages were therefore laid 
 out, the lands cleared, and as settlers arrived locations were 
 given to many of them, titles being issued in the name of the 
 king. The three villages, to which Talon gave the names of 
 Bourg-Royal, Bourg-la-Reine, and Bourg Talon, soon had small 
 but thriving populations ; for these settlers were more fortunate 
 than most of those who came to New France, in that they 
 received lands already cleared and sometimes already placed 
 under seed.'*^ 
 
 Talon's work did not end with this project, however. During 
 the years 1 667-1 668 he purchased for himself large tracts of 
 land lying along the St. Charles River, built a house and barns 
 thereon, and proceeded to spend considerable sums from his 
 own private means in improving his property. The example of 
 the intendant was not lost upon the seigniors of the colony, 
 many of whom seem to have been spurred to new effort in the 
 improvement of their holdings.^ In 1668 Talon went home to 
 France, where he remained until 1670; but during his absence 
 the work of improving his property went on apace. Soon after 
 his return to the colony, he wrote to the minister describing the 
 progress made both in his villages and on the lands which he 
 had purchased, and took occasion to suggest that the king 
 might be pleased to grant him some title of honor, in order 
 that such a recognition of his enterprise might " fill the officers 
 and richer seigniors with a new zeal for the settlement of their 
 lands in the hope of being recompensed with titles as well."* 
 This request was readily granted, and in 1671 Talon received 
 letters patent consohdating his properties and the three royal 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 33. 
 
 2 " On [les] a formes aux environs de Quebec, tant pour le fortifier, en peuplant 
 son voisinage, que pour y recevoir les families venues de France, et auxquelles on 
 distribue des terres deja mises en culture, et dont quelques-unes ont ete cette annee 
 chargees de ble, pour faire le premier fonds de leur subsistance" (^Relation of 1667, 
 in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1. 244) . 
 
 2 The census of 1667 gave the area of cultivated lands as 11,448 arpents ; that 
 of 1668 placed it at 15,642 {Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871, pp. 7-8). The Relation 
 of 1668 speaks in a very hopeful strain of the new activity shown on all sides 
 (Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, li. 170). 
 
 * Talon to Colbert, November 10, 1670, Correspondance Gencrale, iii. 76.
 
 1 64 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 villages which he had founded into one fief, the whole to have 
 the "title and dignity of a barony." To this new barony was 
 given the name Des Islets.^ 
 
 This patent gave Talon authority "to call, name, and style 
 himself Baron des Islets in all acts whether judicial or other- 
 wise, and in that quality to enjoy all the honors, armorial 
 bearings, prerogatives, rank, and precedence, as well at war as 
 at meetings of the nobility or otherwise, in the same manner as 
 the barons of our kingdom"; and it commanded "that all ten- 
 ants, men, and vassals of the said lands" should "acknowledge 
 him as baron, and in such quality render him their fealty and 
 homage." It gave him the right to " estabhsh gaols, a four- 
 post gibbet in such place as he may think fit within the said 
 barony, and a post with an iron collar on which his arms shall be 
 engraved " ; and as a special mark of the royal favor it expressly 
 waived the right of the king to escheat the barony in default of 
 legitimate male heirs. 
 
 Less than two years after his elevation Talon went home to 
 France, having asked for and received his demission from office ;2 
 but in 1675 he was honored by the issue of a further patent 
 "creating, erecting, and elevating" the barony Des Islets into 
 " the title, name, quahty, and dignity of a countship, which shall 
 hereafter be called the countship of Orsainville." To the new 
 Comte d'Orsainville was given, " for himself, his heirs, successors, 
 and assigns, as well male as female," all the "honors, rights, 
 rank, and precedence belonging to the dignity of a count, al- 
 though not here specifically detailed"; and the people of the 
 countship were assured that they should not, by reason of the 
 new dignity conferred upon their seigniorial lord, be subjected 
 to " any greater duties than those which they at present owe."^ 
 
 Although Talon never returned to Canada, his zeal for the in- 
 terests of the colony in general, and for the improvement of his 
 own countship in particular, did not flag. Down to the date of 
 his death in 1694 his watchful care and interest continued; and 
 on more than one occasion he was called by the minister into 
 
 1 Titres des Seigneuries, 348 ; see also Jiigements et Deliberations du Conseil 
 Souverain de la Noiivelle-France, i. 692. 
 
 2 Chapais, Jean Talon, 454. 3 Titres des Seigtieuries, 348.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 165 
 
 consultation concerning matters of policy in New France.^ By 
 his last will and testament he bequeathed the countship of Or- 
 sainville to his nephew Jean Francois Talon,^ who in 1696 sold 
 the estate to Mgr. de St. Vallier, bishop of Quebec. Bishop St. 
 Vallier gave the property to the General Hospital (which he had 
 founded at Quebec) as part of the endowment of that institu- 
 tion, upon condition that it should never be alienated. Two 
 years later, however, an arrangement was made between the 
 authorities of the General Hospital and the Jesuits, whereby the 
 bourgs Royal and La Reine were reunited to the Jesuit seign- 
 iory of Notre Dame des Anges, after having been separated for 
 thirty-two years. ^ The remaining lands, with the exception of a 
 part which in 1896 was handed over to the city of Quebec and 
 now forms Victoria Park, still remain the property of the Gen- 
 eral Hospital. Throughout the old regime in Canada, France 
 found herself served by no inconsiderable number of earnest and 
 public-spirited sons, who gave unsparingly of their vigor and 
 means to the carrying out of the royal projects, often with scant 
 hope of ultimate reward ; but on this roll of gifted and energetic 
 Frenchmen who gave some of the best years of their lives to the 
 stupendous task of creating a Bourbon empire beyond the 
 seas, there is no name more honored or more worthy of honor 
 than that of Jean Talon, Comte d'Orsainville. 
 
 The only other countship in Canada, that of St. Laurent, 
 comprised the island of Orleans, just below Quebec. This 
 island had originally been granted to the Jesuits; but in 1675 
 Laval exchanged it for Isle Jesus, at Montreal, the seigniory of 
 Frangois Berthelot, who is described in his title as " notre con- 
 seiller et secretaire general de I'artillerie, poudres, et salpestres 
 de France." In the year following the exchange, and appar- 
 ently in connection with it, the island of Orleans was made a 
 countship and Berthelot became the Comte de St. Laurent.* 
 
 ^ Regis Roy, Les Intendants de la Notivelle- France, in Royal Society of Canada, 
 Proceedings, 1903, Mhnoires, sec. i. 69-73. 
 
 2 Further details regarding the life and work of Talon are to be found in Chapais's 
 Jean Talon, the appendices to which contain many interesting and hitherto unpub- 
 lished documents. 
 
 ^ Chapais, y>a« Talon, 494-500. 
 
 * Dunkin, Address at the Bar of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, Appendix,
 
 1 66 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 Of baronies, five in all seem to have been created, — four in 
 Canada and one in Acadia. The first of these, that of Cap 
 Tourmente near Quebec, was given to Guillaume de Caen in 
 1624 " in consideration of the great dangers, risks, and hard- 
 ships " which he had incurred in beginning a settlement in New 
 France.^ As Caen had important commercial interests in 
 the colony, great things were expected of him ; but, when the 
 Company of One Hundred Associates came into possession of 
 the colony some half-dozen years later, it was found that a 
 small clearing at the head of the cape marked the limits of the 
 baron's agricultural achievements. This circumstance, with 
 the fact that Caen was a Huguenot, led Richelieu's company 
 to secure a revocation of his grant and title ; but some years 
 later (1640) the French king recouped him by the grant of a 
 barony in the West Indies. 
 
 The second baronial grant in point of time was made in 
 1653 to the Sieur Philippe Mius d'Entremont in Acadia. In 
 165 1 Entremont, a French gentleman of Norman birth, came 
 out to Acadia with Charles de Saint-Etienne de la Tour, and 
 two years later was given the fief and barony of Pobomcoup. 
 This grant was made by La Tour in his capacity of lieu- 
 tenant-general of Acadia.2 The third barony was that al- 
 ready mentioned as having been created for Jean Talon in 
 1671.^ The fourth barony, that of Portneuf, was erected by 
 letters patent from the king in 168 1. The seigniory of Portneuf 
 was originally the property of Jacques Leneuf de la Poterie, 
 who received it from the Company of One Hundred Associates 
 
 No. 148. Two years before the exchange was made, Talon had brought to the notice 
 of the king Berthelot's services in the development of Isle Jesus, and had forwarded 
 therewith a request that the fief be made a barony (Talon to Minister, March 9, 
 1673, Correspondaitce Generale, iv. 94). The population of the countship of St. 
 Laurent is given in the census of 1681 as 1,082 (^Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871, 
 p. II). 
 
 1 Moreau de St. Mery, Lois et Constitutions des Colonies Fran^aises de VAmeriqtie, 
 1. 48 ff. 
 
 2 The barony of Pobomcoup lay north of Cape Sable, at the southern point of the 
 Acadian peninsula. The name has now been corrupted to " Pubnico." A copy of 
 the patent creating the barony is printed in Rameau de Saint-Pere, Une Colonie 
 Feodale en Amerique (1889), 412-413. 
 
 2 See above, p. 164.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 167 
 
 in 1636.^ In 1671 Jacques Leneuf gave the seigniory to his 
 daughter, Marie-Anne, who had, in 1652, married Rene Robi- 
 neau, sometime seignior of Becancour.^ Robineau proved him- 
 self a very progressive seignior. During the years following the 
 establishment of toyal government he was so prominent a figure 
 in New France that in 1681 the king recognized his services by 
 elevating the seigniory to the " title and dignity of a barony, " 
 and Robineau became Baron de Portneuf.^ One of his sons, 
 who had taken possession of his father's former seigniory of 
 Becancour, is sometimes referred to as Baron de Becancour ; 
 but this appellation is entirely unwarranted, as Becancour was 
 never made a barony.^ 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of all the baronial grants is the 
 last in point of creation, that of Longueuil. About 1654 Charles 
 Lemoyne, the son of a Dieppe innkeeper, arrived in Canada and 
 took up his abode in Montreal, where on more than one occa- 
 sion he rendered yeoman's service in the operations against the 
 Indians. Some years later he received a seigniorial grant (which 
 he called Longueuil) on the south shore of the St. Lawrence 
 almost opposite the island of Montreal; and in 1668, in recog- 
 nition of his services, he was rewarded by the king with rank in 
 the noblesse of France. He died in 1685. 
 
 Charles Lemoyne had eleven sturdy sons, ten of whom 
 became prominent figures in the history of Canada during the 
 French period. The eldest, Charles, after inheriting the seign- 
 iory, took a prominent part in the repulse of Phipps at Quebec 
 in 1690. Having purchased considerable land contiguous to his 
 seigniory, he had by the close of the seventeenth century be- 
 come one of the most extensive lay landholders in the colony ; 
 and since his holdings yielded him substantial profits he soon 
 became opulent for a colonial seignior, as was shown by his 
 erection of a pretentious stone castle flanked by four imposing 
 towers.^ Lemoyne de Longueuil also erected a well-equipped 
 
 1 See below, p. 170. The family of Leneuf de la Poterie must not be confused 
 with that of Bacqueville de la Potherie, the historian. 
 "^ Tanguay, Dictionnaire Genealogique, i. 523. 
 
 ^ The patent is printed in Gatien, Histoire de la Paroisse du Cap-Sante, 367 ff. 
 * Suite, Histoire des Canadiens-Fran^ais, v. io6. 
 ^ See above, p. 66. The original building was gutted by fire in 1782 ; but a part
 
 l68 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 seigniorial mill, built good roads throughout his seigniory, and 
 in general made it a model seigniorial property.^ As usual, 
 such enterprise won the appreciation of the French monarch, 
 who, in 1 700, consolidated the seignior's extensive holdings into 
 the barony of Longueuil, mentioning in the patent of creation 
 the very notable services rendered by various members of the 
 Lemoyne family in the colony .^ 
 
 Of all the titles of honor granted by the French crown in 
 Canada, that of the Baron de Longueuil is the only one now 
 included in the British peerage. After the conquest of Canada 
 the descendants of Charles Lemoyne maintained that the cession 
 of the colony to Great Britain did not invalidate titles pre- 
 viously conferred; and they therefore assumed the title of 
 Baron de Longueuil according as they were entitled to it in 
 the order of succession under the old French rule.^ In 1880 
 
 of it, including the west tower, remained standing as late as 1885, when it was torn 
 down to make room for the new parish church of Longueuil. 
 
 ^ The population of Longueuil and Tremblay is placed by the census of 1698 at 
 223. Cf. Censuses of Catiada, 1665-1871, p. 40. 
 
 2 The honor was conferred by the king in response to a request made by the Sieur 
 de Longueuil, through the governor and intendant, two years previously (see Fron- 
 tenac and Champigny to Minister,October 15, 1698, Correspondance Gen'erale, vol.xvi). 
 The history of the seigniory and barony of Longueuil is traced in detail in Jodoia 
 and Vincent's Histoire de Longueuil et de la Famille de Longueuil (Montreal, 1889) ; 
 and there is an interesting little essay on the Baron de Longueuil in Sir J. M. Le 
 Moine's Maple Leaves, ist series, 47-53. For the order to communicate to the 
 attorney-general the letters patent creating the barony, see Jugemetils et Delibera- 
 tions du Conseil Souverain de la Notivelle- France, iv. 492. 
 
 ^ The first Baron de Longueuil, born in 1656, died governor of Montreal in 1729. 
 His son Charles, second baron, born in 1687, was for a time administrator of the 
 colony, and died in January, 1755. The third baron was Charles Jacques Lemoyne 
 (1724-1755), who, after distinguishing himself on the Monongahela, was killed at 
 Lake George a few months after his father's death. As the third baron had no sons, 
 the barony passed to his only daughter, Marie, who in 1 78 1 married Captain David 
 Alexander Grant of the 94th Regiment. Their son, Charles William Grant, as- 
 sumed the title of fifth baron in 1841, and died seven years later. The title 
 then passed to his son, Charles James Irwin Grant, who held it till his death in 1879, 
 when his son, Charles Colmore Grant, succeeded him as seventh baron. On the death 
 of the last-named, in 1899, the barony passed to his half-brother, Reginald Charles 
 d'lherville Grant, who holds the title of eighth Baron de Longueuil at the present 
 time. The house of Longueuil is widely connected by marriage with many promi- 
 nent families of contemporary French Canada, notably with those of Baby, 
 Beaujeu, Lanaudiere, Gaspe, and Le Moine.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 169 
 
 Her Majesty Queen Victoria, on the advice of the law officers 
 of the crown, accorded recognition to Charles Colmore Grant as 
 seventh Baron of Longueuil.^ 
 
 The barony of Longueuil at one time included an area of 
 about one hundred and fifty square miles, within which were 
 the important towns of St. Johns and Longueuil ; but much 
 of it has been sold and is now held in freehold by private 
 owners. Such portions as had not been sold were in 1854 
 entailed as far as the existing laws would allow ; and, as this 
 entail has since been renewed, the eighth baron has at present 
 a life interest only in the estate. In the annals of French 
 Canada from first to last there is probably no family which 
 has consistently maintained a more favorable prominence than 
 that of the former Dieppe innkeeper. One can read but few 
 pages in the history of colonial America without encountering 
 the name of a Lemoyne ; for from Hudson's Bay to the 
 Mississippi some member of this virile family seems to have 
 connected himself with almost every phase of French 
 colonization.^ 
 
 Among the noble holdings in New France only one chatel- 
 lenie is numbered, that of Coulonge, which was given by the 
 company to Louis d'Ailleboust in 1656. D'Ailleboust had 
 come to Montreal shortly after the town was founded, and 
 after filling important civil offices was in 1648 appointed gov- 
 ernor of the colony. After the expiration of his gubernatorial 
 term he remained in the country and devoted himself to the 
 improvement of Coulonge, which the company later erected 
 
 1 The royal recognition was officially promulgated as follows : " The Queen has been 
 graciously pleased to recognize the right of Charles Colmore Grant, Esquire, to the title 
 of Baron de Longueuil, of Longueuil in the Province of Quebec, Canada. This title 
 was conferred on his ancestor, Charles Lemoyne, by letters patent of nobility signed 
 by King Louis XIV in the year 1700" {Londoti Gazette, December 7, 1880). The 
 Baron de Longueuil is not, however, entitled as such to a seat in the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 2 Among the brothers of the first Baron de Longueuil were Jacques Lemoyne 
 de Ste. Helene, who fell at the siege of Quebec in 1690 ; Pierre Lemoyne d'Iberville 
 and Jean Baptiste Lemoyne de Bienville, founders of Louisiana, and the latter gov- 
 ernor of that colony ; Joseph Lemoyne de Serigny, naval officer and later governor of 
 Rochefort ; and Louis Lemoyne de Chateauguay, killed in action at Fort Bourbon 
 on Hudson's Bay.
 
 170 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 into a chatellenie as a mark of appreciation of his efficient 
 services.^ 
 
 There seem to have been two marquisates in the territory of 
 New France, but very little is known about them. About 1645, 
 Jacques Leneuf de la Poterie, who has already been men- 
 tioned as having received the seigniory of Portneuf in 1636, 
 removed from this latter place and settled at Three Rivers, 
 where he received from the company a grant of certain lands.^ 
 This grant passed later into the hands of his son, Michel 
 Leneuf de la VaUieres, who, in 1686, sold it to Charles Aubert 
 de la Chesnaye through a deed of sale in which the territory 
 is designated as the "marquisat de Sable." ^ No trace of any 
 patent creating this marquisate has been found, however, nor 
 does any Marquis de Sable appear to be mentioned in any of 
 the records of the time. All that can be learned of the other 
 marquisate is that, in the closing years of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, the title of Marquis de Miscou was given to one Michel 
 de Saint-Martin, a French adventurer.* The title presumably 
 relates to the island of Miscou in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but 
 there is no evidence that the marquis ever came to New France. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing grants of higher dignities, many 
 " letters of noblesse " were issued from time to time giving seign- 
 iors rank among the lesser nobility. The term "noblesse" in its 
 widest sense included all lay members of the privileged orders, 
 no matter what their rank or their method of acquiring it ; for 
 the attributes of nobility might be inherited, or obtained by letters 
 patent from the king, or acquired through the tenure of certain 
 designated offices in the royal service, either military or civil.^ 
 There were, therefore, in France a large number of untitled 
 nobles, or " gentilshommes," who, despite their lack of titles, 
 
 1 This patent is not printed in Titres des Seigneuries, but may be found in the 
 Rapport du Minislre des Travaux Publics de la Province de Quebec (1899), 91. A 
 summary of its contents, taken from the manuscript, is given in Dunkin's Address, 
 Appendix, No. 44 a. 
 
 ^ Titres des Seigneuries, 392. 
 
 ^ Suite, Histoire des Canadien-Fran^ais, v. I02. 
 
 * Ibid. no. 
 
 ^"On distinguait plusieurs especes de noblesse : la noblesse hereditaire et la 
 noblesse accordee par les rois, la noblesse d'epee et la noblesse de robe " (Cheruel, 
 Dictionnaire Historiqiie des Institutions de la France, ii. 858).
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 1 71 
 
 possessed all the attributes and privileges of nobility, and trans- 
 mitted their quality and status to their posterity. ^ 
 
 Some of the emigrants to the colony, especially some of those 
 who came out to take positions in the civil or the military service, 
 were already members of the noblesse at home ; and these, of 
 course, retained their rank in Canada. Others were commoners 
 upon arrival, but received elevation as a royal reward for their 
 interest in colonial development or for distinguished ability in 
 the service of the crown.^ As early as 1667, Talon, in his 
 " Memoire sur I'Etat Present du Canada," explained that "the 
 noblesse of Canada " was " composed of four old families [that 
 is, members of the noblesse at home] and four others to whom 
 rank has been given by the king."^ The first four to whom 
 the intendant referred were probably the families of Jacques 
 Leneuf de la Poterie,* Charles Le Gardeur de Tilly, Jean Bap- 
 tiste Le Gardeur de Repentigny, and Charles Joseph d' Ailleboust 
 de Musseaux. The others cannot be definitely ascertained. It 
 seems, however, that in 1661 Pierre Boucher had, on the recom- 
 mendation of Governor Lauzon, received rank in the noblesse 
 in recognition of his services as governor of Three Rivers, but 
 that for some reason this patent was revoked five years later and 
 Boucher became once more a commoner.^ Some other grants 
 of noble status had also been made to colonials during this 
 period, and it is probably to the holders of these that Talon had 
 reference when he spoke of the " four other families. " In the 
 
 1 Strictly speaking, the term " gentilshommes " included only the hereditary 
 noblesse (JZh&tn^X, Diciionnaire Hisiorigue,\. j\?>6'); but in New France it seems 
 to have been applied to all the untitled noblesse, whether hereditary or not. 
 
 2. Robert Cavelier de la Salle, for example, received his patent in 1675 in appre- 
 ciation of his zeal and success in exploration. See Gravier, Cavelier de la Salle 
 de Rouen (1871), 360-361. 
 
 8 This " Memoire," which bears date of October 27, 1667, may be found in the 
 Correspondance Generale, ii. 493-524. It contains a description of the colonial 
 population at the time, and may be profitably compared with Hocquart's some- 
 what different characterization of seventy years later (see Hocquart to Minister, No- 
 vember 8, 1737, Ibid. vol. Ixvii). 
 
 * On the matter of Leneuf's claim to rank in the noblesse, see Jugements et De- 
 liberations du Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle-France, i. 997. 
 
 5 This seems to have been an echo in the colony of the wholesale revocation of 
 patents of noblesse which took place in France, under Colbert's auspices, in 1666. 
 See Isambert, Recueil General des Anciennes Lois Fran^aises, xviii. 73,
 
 172 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 same year (1667) the intendant asked that letters of noblesse 
 should be given to five prominent colonists, — Godefroy, Le- 
 moyne, Denys, Amiot, and Couillard ; ^ and at the same time 
 Lieutenant-General Tracy, who commanded the troops in 
 the colony, asked similar favors for Jean Bourdon, Ruette 
 d'Auteuil, and Juchereau de la Ferte.^ Tracy furthermore urged 
 that Boucher's patent should be restored to him. With all of 
 these requests the king appears to have complied. 
 
 The grant of these honors seems to have made such an im- 
 pression in the colony that forthwith traders, artisans, and 
 others were seized with a new desire to obtain seigniories in the 
 hope that social elevation might follow. We are told, for in- 
 stance, that Noel Langlois was a good carpenter until he se- 
 cured a seigniory and aspired to be a gentilhomme, when he 
 became proud and indolent ;^ and that Jacques Le Ber, a Mont- 
 real shopkeeper, who had by years of work and thrift amassed 
 a considerable fortune, readily paid out six thousand livres to 
 become a gentleman.* Seigniors, merchants, artisans, and 
 habitants sought patents of noblesse with almost equal vigor ; 
 the whole colony became infatuated with aristocratic ideas, and 
 men who failed to get formal recognition made a pretence of 
 having received it. Habitants who had by years of hard labor 
 amassed sufficient to purchase half -developed seigniories strutted 
 about with the airs of born aristocrats, while their wives, in 
 the words of Governor Denonville, " essayed to play the fine 
 lady."^ The intendant Meulles was disgusted with the spirit: 
 " Every one in the colony," he wrote, " begins by calling himself 
 an ecuyer, and ends by thinking himself a gentilhomme."^ 
 
 Many of this class of gentilshommes, genuine and bogus, be- 
 
 1 See Talon's " Memoire" of October 27, 1667, cited above. 
 
 2 See Tracy's " Memoire sur le Canada," 1667, a copy of which may be found in 
 the Parkman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 2 Duchesneau to Minister, November 10, 1679, Correspondance Ghterale, v. 62. 
 
 * Faillon, Vie de la Madevioiselle Le Ber, 325. Le Ber, who became Monsieur 
 de Senneville and seignior of the fief of St. Paul's Island, was reputed to be the 
 richest man in Montreal. Langlois became seignior of the fief of Port-Joly ( Tii"es 
 des Seignetiries, 130). 
 
 ^ Denonville to Minister, November 10, 1686, Correspondance Generale, viii. 210.- 
 
 ^ Meulles to Minister, November 4, 1683, Ibid. vi. 323.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE 173 
 
 came so conspicuous by their " pride, sloth, and poverty," ^ that 
 as early as 1679 the colonial authorities began to call the atten- 
 tion of the minister to the danger of granting too many patents 
 of nobility in the colony. " Many of our aristocratic officers," 
 wrote Duchesneau in that year, " lead what in France would be 
 called the life of a country gentleman, spending most of their 
 time in fishing and hunting. As they require more expensive 
 food and better clothes than do the ordinary habitants, and as 
 they do not devote themselves to the cultivation of their lands, 
 but only engage at intervals in illicit trade, they get into debt 
 on all sides and throw out the temptation to their children to be- 
 come coureurs-de-bois in spite of the interdictions of His Majesty 
 . . . ; and notwithstanding their spasmodic trading operations 
 they are in miserable poverty." ^ 
 
 In 1685 Governor Denonville expressed himself in a simi- 
 lar way. "Above all things," he wrote to the minister, 
 " let me inform you. Sir, that the noblesse of this colony are a 
 beggarly lot, and that to increase their number is but to increase 
 the number of drones. A new country needs sturdy workmen 
 to wield the axe and to handle the hoe. The only resource of 
 the noblesse is to take to the forest, there to trade a little with 
 the Indians and for the most part to contract their vices." ^ 
 These are strong aspersions, but they were very probably 
 warranted by the condition of many of those who claimed to be 
 noblesse at the time.* 
 
 In one of his lengthy despatches of the following year, De- 
 nonville again drew the royal attention to the condition of the 
 noblesse. This time he mentioned specifically the poverty of 
 several families, notably that of St. Ours, who had been at 
 one time an officer in the Carignan-Salieres regiment; and he 
 requested the king to afford some monetary assistance to them.^ 
 
 1 Champigny to Minister, August 26, 1687, Correspondance Generale, ix. 144. 
 
 2 Duchesneau to Minister, November 10, 1679, Ibid. v. 62. 
 
 3 Denonville to Minister, November 13, 1685, Ibid. vii. 55. 
 
 * It must not be forgotten, however, that many of the colonial noblesse were 
 qnjte well-to-do. Such, for example, were the families of Lemoyne, Leneuf, Boucher, 
 Robineau, Villeray, Lotbiniere, Saurel, and several others. 
 
 6 An interesting sidelight on the abject poverty of the noblesse is thrown by the 
 •correspondence which passed between Governor Frontenac and the minister during
 
 174 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 " Otherwise," he continued, " there is grave danger that their 
 sons will turn bandits or go over to the EngUsh, since they 
 have no other means of gaining a livelihood." The governor 
 went on to impress upon the minister his belief that the colony 
 would do very well without an aristocracy. " I had much rather," 
 he wrote, " see good habitants in this colony ; for a habitant 
 who can and will work can get along very well in this country, 
 while gentlemen who do not work can never be anything but 
 paupers." ^ 
 
 As usual, the generous king came to the relief of St. Ours 
 and the rest by sending the governor sums of money to be 
 distributed among the struggling noblesse. This temporary 
 succor did not avail much, however ; for before the year was 
 over we find the intendant, Champigny, asking similar assistance 
 for Repentigny, Tilly, and D'Ailleboust, who, it will be re- 
 membered, were three of the "old families" to whom Talon 
 had made reference some years before as having brought their 
 "quality" with them from France. All of them had large 
 households, and seem to have found it very difficult to live 
 comfortably on the scanty seigniorial payments. Their younger 
 children, the intendant declares, often went about half clad, 
 while their wives and grown-up daughters found themselves 
 compelled to pocket their pride and labor in the fields.^ 
 
 the years 1690-1698, regarding various recommendations made by the governor in 
 favor of certain seigniors. In 1690 Frontenac asked that letters of noblesse be given 
 to Francois Hertel, seignior of Rouville, in recognition of his services. The request 
 was promptly granted, but when the documents arrived Hertel did not have funds 
 wherewith to pay the small fee required ; whereupon the governor asked the minis- 
 ter to remit the amount on account of Hertel's poverty. This request the minister 
 refused rather testily in a despatch to the governor and intendant, part of which 
 reads as follows : " Sa Majeste n'a pas voulu entrer dans la demande du Sieur de 
 Hertel, et sy cet homme n'est pas en estat de payer le sceau des lettres de noblesse 
 qu' elle luy a accorde, il le sera encore moins d'en soustenir la qualite. Sa Majeste 
 ne les auroit pas accorde sy elle avoit este informe de sa pauvrete, estant certain que 
 cela ne serviroit qu' a jeter ses enfans dans le desordre qui auroient pu s'addonner a 
 des travaux qui ne conviennent point ^ des gentilshommes " (" Memoire du Roy aux 
 SieursComte de Frontenac et de Champigny," May 21, 1698, Collection de Manu- 
 scrits relatifs a la Nouvelle- France, ii. 301). The language and expression are 
 somewhat peculiar, but the point intended to be made is clear enough. 
 
 1 Denonville to Minister, November 10,1686, Correspondance Generale,\\\\, 192-266. 
 
 2 " C'est une chose digne de compassion de voir un grand nombre d'enfans
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 175 
 
 Other measures of relief than direct grants of alms were soon 
 forthcoming. For one thing, the king arranged that male 
 children of the noblesse should receive a limited number of mid- 
 shipmen's commissions in the royal navy. Others were to be 
 enrolled into cadet companies and regularly drilled in arms, and 
 for this service were to have a small daily compensation. For 
 the benefit of the adults a general conge was given, allowing 
 them to engage in trade without prejudice to their rank ; but 
 this permission was of little use to them, for in New France, as 
 elsewhere, trade required both capital and experience, and the 
 gentilhomme lacked both. The authorities also seem to have 
 endeavored, when possible, to give members of the noblesse 
 such civil posts as might fall vacant from time to time ; but 
 the number of available offices was never large. In the long 
 run, most of the nobility were forced to eke out a precarious 
 existence from the dues which as seigniors they received from 
 their dependents, supplemented by what they could raise on their 
 ungranted domains. Very often they lived and worked like 
 habitants, making the fruits of a hard season's toil and little more. 
 
 One would naturally think that, when the complaints of the 
 authorities as to the poverty of the noblesse first reached the 
 king, the latter would have made an end to the practice of 
 ennobling colonials. Not so, however. The letters patent con- 
 tinued to come, until the intendant fairly implored the king to 
 grant no more patents unless he simply wished " to increase the 
 number of beggars." ^ Then the minister announced that the 
 practice would cease ; but the promise was not kept, and before 
 many years had passed rank in the noblesse was again being 
 granted as freely as before. Down to the close of the period of 
 French rule, indeed, the design of creating a colonial noblesse 
 seems never to have been wholly abandoned. 
 
 It was, however, in a calling widely different from industry 
 or agriculture that the Canadian gentilhomme found his favorite 
 vocation. Many of the noblesse had military training, and 
 
 qu'ils ont, passer tout I'este avec la simple chemise et leurs femmes et leurs filles tra- 
 vailler a la terre " (Champigny to Minister, August 26, 1687, Correspondance Gen- 
 erale, ix. 144-147). 
 
 ^ Champigny to Minister, May 10, 1691, Ibid. xi. 351.
 
 176 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 
 
 most of them, perhaps, had military ancestry; at any rate, 
 all seem to have had strongly warlike tastes. The gentil- 
 homme, therefore, betook himself readily to the military service 
 of the colony, and in the almost continual broils that took place 
 either with the Indians or with the English found ample scope 
 for the exercise of his belligerent propensities. He learned the 
 science of forest warfare very quickly, and soon combined the 
 sagacity of the redskin with the intelligence of the European. 
 In all the incursions which wrought untold misery in the out- 
 lying hamlets of English America, the gentilhomme took 
 a leading if not always a creditable part. The descent on 
 Schenectady in 1 689-1 690 was due largely to the initiative of 
 the young Lemoynes, sons of Lemoyne de Longueuil. Le- 
 moyne d'Iberville was in command, and with him were his two 
 adventurous brothers, Lemoyne de St. Helene and Lemoyne 
 de Bienville ; while on the roster of marauders accompanying 
 them one finds the names of Repentigny, D'Ailleboust, and 
 several other young members of the colonial noblesse. The 
 Deerfield raid of 1704 was organized by the Hertels of the 
 Richelieu district ; and the expedition which pounced on Haver- 
 hill some four years later had among its leaders Hertel de 
 Rouville, Boucher de la Perriere, St. Ours Deschaillons, and 
 various other colonial aristocrats. On the occasion of every 
 butchering raid across the borders of New England, the gentil- 
 homme was readily to the front. Last in peace, he was first in 
 war. "He was," says Parkman, "at home among his tenants, 
 at home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, 
 a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the war- 
 path with a crew of painted savages and Frenchmen nearly as 
 wild, to pounce like a lynx from the forest upon some lonely 
 farm or outlying hamlet of New England. How New England 
 hated him, let her records tell. The reddest blood-streaks on 
 her old annals mark the track of the Canadian gentilhomme." ^ 
 When the colony passed into British hands, many of the 
 gentilshommes sold their seigniories and went to France. 
 Naturally the percentage of exodus was higher among them 
 than among the habitants. Maseres estimated that after the 
 
 ^ Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, ii. 6i.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL NOBLESSE. 177 
 
 treaty was signed in 1763 only twenty-two noble families re- 
 mained in Canada ; ^ and four years later a table submitted 
 to the home authorities by Governor Carleton showed how 
 badly the hegira had depleted their ranks.^ The new suzerains 
 respected the rank and privileges of all those who remained ; 
 and Carleton suggested that, in view of the influence which they 
 possessed over the habitants, the noblesse should be welded into 
 sympathy with the new administration in every possible way. 
 
 The institution of the noblesse was not an indispensable 
 part of the seigniorial system, but in some ways served to 
 strengthen it. Many seigniors were unquestionably spurred 
 on to greater efforts in the development of their fiefs by the 
 hope of receiving elevation to rank in the noblesse as a 
 reward of their zeal ; for, although those who were so favored 
 did not appear much the better for it, the royal reward was 
 highly prized and zealously sought from first to last. Neither 
 the seigniors nor the noblesse of Canada can properly be 
 said to have formed a privileged order. Since no direct taxes 
 were ever levied in the colony, there were no exemptions 
 in favor of any class of the people. The seigniors and the 
 nobility paid tithes, and if they engaged in trade they paid 
 the regular import and export duties. Before the law they 
 were but the peers of the habitant, and the intendant saw to 
 it that this equality was no mere fiction of judicial adminis- 
 tration. Nevertheless, like the attempt to foster a system 
 of private justice, the endeavor to nurture a seigniorial aris- 
 tocracy and to reproduce beyond the seas a prototype of the 
 French nobility proved a rather discouraging failure. The little 
 band of colonial elite was nursed liberally with royal favor and 
 encouragement, but the gaunt, lean body would not thrive ; its 
 debility was chronic from first to last. 
 
 1 Maseres, Additional Papers concerning the Province of Quebec, 164-168, 171. 
 
 2 This table is printed in the Report on Canadian Archives for i888, p. 41 ff.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 From beginning to end, one of the bulwarks of Canadian 
 feudalism was the Catholic church, which, with its various 
 subordinate institutions and orders, entered heartily into the 
 spirit of the system, gave it unvarying support, and was a 
 strong factor in securing its development and extension. 
 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French 
 colonial policy in America grounded itself upon a curious 
 mixture of religious and economic motives. " That the people 
 who inhabit these lands may be brought to a knowledge of 
 the only God . . . and that there may be created in these 
 newly discovered regions some trade which may become advan- 
 tageous to His Majesty's subjects," were these motives as set 
 forth in official language at an early date in the history of 
 New France ; ^ and from that time to the day when the fleur- 
 de-lys of the Bourbons fluttered down from the ramparts of 
 Quebec, the royal authorities of France never lost sight of 
 the religious motive in colonization. The priest and the 
 trader, the two most prominent as well as most picturesque 
 figures in the daily life of New France throughout its event- 
 ful history, were the living embodiments of Bourbon colonial 
 ideals. But religion and trade were alike militant, and their 
 conflicting interests were often difficult to harmonize. Succes- 
 sive functionaries — governors, intendants, commissioners — 
 wore out their health and their patience in a futile endeavor 
 to reconcile what seemed to be the clashing interests of God 
 and mammon as typified in the respective aspirations of the 
 Jesuit and the coureur-de-bois. 
 
 With agriculture, however, religion was on much better terms. 
 Men who remained on the land and tilled the soil were well 
 
 1 "Acte pour I'etablissement de la Compagnie des Cent Associes," April 29, 1627, 
 Edits et Ordonnances, i. 5. 
 
 178
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 179 
 
 within the reach of both church and state, while the lawless 
 huckster of the wilderness was within arm's length of neither. 
 The seigniors and their habitants could be used by the emis- 
 saries of the church to set before the eyes of the savages an 
 example of French civilization ; they could be utiUzed as exempli- 
 fying the thrifty, industrious, sober, and godly life. The trad- 
 ers, on the other hand, could never be used to this end ; on the 
 contrary, if we may believe the clerical writers of the time, their 
 influence upon the work of the church among the savages was 
 wholly demoralizing, engendering among the redskins a general 
 contempt for the ethics of French conduct. The writings 
 of the Jesuits especially abound in blistering arraignments of 
 these coureurs-de-bois, who, it is claimed, taught the savages all 
 the vices of French civilization in its most degenerate days. 
 Indeed, the dishonest and licentious conduct of the trading 
 population was consistently regarded by the church as the 
 greatest obstacle to the propagation of the faith in the north- 
 ern regions of the New World. 
 
 It therefore became the natural aim and policy of the church 
 to support in every way any efforts which the civil authorities 
 might make from time to time toward keeping the people on 
 the land. This support the hierarchy gave, not simply by lend- 
 ing the aid of ecclesiastical discipline against all who disobeyed 
 the laws that forbade men to leave their lands without permis- 
 sion, but, more particularly, by its work and example in de- 
 veloping and cultivating lands given by the crown to the church 
 and its subsidiary organizations. 
 
 Foremost among these dependent organizations was that 
 known as the Reverend Fathers of the Society and Company 
 of Jesus, more commonly called the Jesuit order. As early as 
 1626 this order had obtained from the Due de Montmorenci, 
 then viceroy of New France, its first grant of lands, the 
 concession of Notre Dame des Anges, near Quebec ; and from 
 this time on it received grants in all parts of the colony at 
 frequent intervals. Before the close of the French period it had 
 become by far the largest landholder in the country ; on the eve 
 of the conquest it owned not less than a dozen estates, com- 
 prising almost a million arpents of land. Nearly a century
 
 rSo THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 before the cession of Canada to Great Britain, a governor 
 whose opinion of the Jesuits was not of the highest had ven- 
 tured to prophesy that in the course of time the Jesuits would 
 monopolize all the best lands of the colony, a prediction which 
 was on the high road to fulfilment by the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century ; for the Jesuits then held about one-eighth of 
 all the granted lands. Nor were their lands greater in extent 
 than in value ; for comprised within the Jesuit estates were 
 hundreds of thousands of arpents of the very choicest lands 
 of the St. Lawrence valley, the most fertile and the most 
 favorably located for purposes of settlement.^ 
 
 Although the Jesuits were the most favored of the various 
 orders and institutions of the church, they were not by any 
 means the only ones to share largely in the royal bounty. The 
 kings of France, especially Louis XIV, sincerely desired the 
 advancement of all the church interests in the colony, and 
 would gladly have contributed heavily from the royal funds 
 toward the work of the various religious orders ; on many occa- 
 sions, in fact, Louis XIV assisted the church in New France by 
 liberal donations of money. The treasury of the Bourbons, 
 however, in the latter part of the seventeenth and the early 
 
 1 The following lands were held by the Jesuit order : — 
 
 Charlesbourg 119,720 arpents 
 
 Lorette 23,944 arpents 
 
 Sillery .......... 8,979 arpents 
 
 Isle aux Ruaux ......... 360 arpents 
 
 Cap de la Magdelaine ....... 282,240 arpents 
 
 Batiscan .......... 282,240 arpents 
 
 La Prairie de la Magdelaine ...... 56,448 arpents 
 
 St. Gabriel ......... 104,850 arpents 
 
 Isle St. Christophe ........ 80 arpents 
 
 Pachiriny 585 arpents 
 
 La Vacherie ......... 73 arpents 
 
 St. Nicholas 1,180 arpents 
 
 Tadoussac ......... 6 arpents 
 
 Total 880,705 arpents 
 
 For these data, see Tache, Plan for the Comrmitation of the Seigniorial Tenure. 
 This table may be profitably compared with the " Acknowledgment and Enumera- 
 tiun of the Estates of the Jesuit Fathers in Canada, 1781-17S8," printed in Thwaites, 
 Jesuit delations and Allied Documents, Ixxi. 65-95. See also Smith, History of Can- 
 ada, i, Appendix.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. i8l 
 
 part of the eighteenth century, was not full to overflowing, and 
 hence for the most part the royal interest and appreciation had 
 to show itself in grants of land instead of money. As land in 
 the colony was plentiful, donations were lavish, — frequently 
 tens of thousands of arpents at a time. 
 
 Next to the Jesuits as extensive recipients of this form of 
 royal generosity came the Bishop and Seminary of Quebec, 
 with a patrimony of nearly seven hundred thousand arpents of 
 land, an enormous accumulation which was largely the work 
 of Laval, first bishop of Quebec and founder of the Seminary. 
 The Sulpitians had at the time of the conquest succeeded in 
 amassing about a quarter of a million arpents, while the Ursu- 
 lines of Quebec had acquired a little more than one hundred 
 and sixty thousand. The Recollets, who came to the colony at 
 an early date and for a time bade fair to rival the Jesuits in 
 influence and power, had failed to extend their influence to any 
 appreciable degree, and had enjoyed almost no share in the 
 royal liberality, their land holdings amounting to less than a 
 thousand arpents. The superior power of the Jesuits had all 
 but smothered the budding ambitions of the Recollets. Various 
 other orders and institutions — as, for instance, the Ursulines of 
 Three Rivers, the General Hospitals at Quebec and Montreal, 
 the Hotel Dieu at Quebec — had also acquired holdings of 
 varying amounts, which, with those of the organizations just 
 mentioned, comprised somewhat less than a million and a 
 quarter arpents, more land than was held by the Jesuits.^ As 
 all of these orders (including the Jesuits) were either directly 
 
 1 The areas of the holdings were as follows : — 
 
 Bishop and Seminary of Quebec 693,324 arpents 
 
 Sulpitians. ......... 250,191 arpents 
 
 Ursulines of Quebec . ....... 164,616 arpents 
 
 Les Soeurs Crises 42,336 arpents 
 
 General Hospital at Quebec 28,497 arpents 
 
 Ursulines of Three Rivers. ...... 30,909 arpents 
 
 Hotel Dieu at Quebec ....... 14,112 arpents 
 
 Recollets .......... 945 arpents 
 
 General Hospital at Montreal 404 arpents 
 
 1,225,334 arpents 
 
 Jesuits 880,705 arpents 
 
 Grand Total 2,106,039 arpents
 
 1 82 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 or indirectly under ecclesiastical control, the church had thus 
 acquired in perpetuity the ownership of no less than 2,106,039 
 arpents of land in the colony, while the laymen had received 
 much less than six million arpents. The church, then, controlled 
 nearly two-sevenths of the granted lands of New France ; hence 
 its position there was relatively stronger than at home. 
 
 The possession and control by the church, through its various 
 institutions and orders, of such enormous territorial interests 
 naturally gave it a favorable predilection toward that system 
 under which the lands had been acquired and through the 
 maintenance of which they could be firmly held. The seign- 
 iorial tenure, therefore, permitting as it did the exaction of 
 important revenues from these extensive holdings, and at the 
 same time placing the holders under no important financial obli- 
 gations to the state, was looked upon with high favor by those 
 who for nearly a century held in their hands the destinies of 
 Catholicism in North America, — Laval, St. Vallier, and Pont- 
 briand.^ 
 
 Both the seigniorial system and the parochial were strength- 
 ened by the fact that the boundaries of the seigniories were in 
 most cases coterminous with those of the parishes. The reason 
 for this is to be found largely in the very late creation of the 
 parishes ; for it was not until 1722 that, on the urgent counsel of 
 the intendant Begon, the church authorities consented to a 
 delimitation of parochial divisions. Up to that time it had been 
 the policy of the bishop to keep all the priests on a missionary 
 basis, sending them out from Quebec or Montreal to the various 
 seigniories,^ and not permitting any priest to remain very long 
 in one place; for it seemed to the bishops that by this means 
 the priests could be kept more completely under episcopal con- 
 trol than would be possible if they were permanently settled in 
 the various parishes. In this matter the experience of the church 
 in France was not lost upon the heads of the ecclesiastical 
 organization in the colony. 
 
 ^ The church lands had, for the most part, been freed from the usual obligations 
 -to the crown. See above, p. 52. 
 
 2 Catalogne, in his report (see above, p. 45), makes frequent reference to this 
 practice.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 183 
 
 In the division of 1722, forty-one parishes were created in the 
 district of Quebec, twenty-eight in the district of Montreal, and 
 thirteen in the district of Three Rivers. In most cases the new 
 parishes were coterminous with old seigniories ; in a few in- 
 stances, however, larger seigniories were divided into two or 
 more parishes, and in others a number of smaller or sparsely 
 settled seigniories were grouped into a single parish. The 
 seigniorial church, where there was such, now became the 
 parish church ; but very often there was no place of worship 
 other than a room in the seignior's house. The parish cure now 
 resided in the seigniory ; and, as he was seldom provided with 
 a presbytery, he not infrequently made his home with the seign- 
 ior, with whom he often came to be a fast friend, aiding him 
 with his assistance, counsel, and moral support. The manor- 
 house thus became in a great many cases the centre of the 
 religious as well as of the social relations of the seigniory. As 
 the Abb6 Casgrain has remarked: "The system rested upon 
 two men, the cure and the seignior, who walked side by side 
 and extended mutual help to each other. The censitaire, who 
 was at the same time parishioner, had his two rallying points, 
 — the church and the manor-house. The Interests of the two 
 were usually identical, especially as the limits of the seigniory 
 were, with few exceptions, identical with those of the parish."^ 
 
 It was not, however, obhgatory upon the seignior to provide 
 for the sustenance of the cure, since the priests were supported 
 out of the tithes, supplemented by gifts from the king or from 
 philanthropic individuals in France. As early as 1663, Bishop 
 Laval ordered an annual tithe of one-thirteenth of the produce 
 of farms to be collected throughout the colony ; and in the same 
 year the Sovereign Council gave this order the force of a secu- 
 lar law.2 ^j. once there was a general outcry from the habitants 
 that the tax was too heavy, and after a good deal of hesitation 
 Laval agreed to reduce it to one twenty-sixth. In 1679 the 
 king confirmed this action, and endowed the church with the 
 
 1 H. R. Casgrain, Une Paroisse Canadienne au xvii" Siecle, 40-41. 
 
 2 Mandements des Eviques de Quebec, i. 44-46 (March 26, 1663); Juge77ients et 
 Deliberations du Conseil Souverain de la Notcvelle-France, i. 1 8- 1 9 (October lO, 
 1663).
 
 1 84 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 perpetual right to exact one twenty-sixth. ^ The returns from 
 this source were not large, however ; as late as 1700 the revenue 
 did not amount to more than four or five thousand livres per 
 year, and this sufficed to maintain only ten cures even at the 
 low stipends paid in the colony. 
 
 The tithe could be collected by the cure or by persons ap- 
 pointed by the parishioners for the purpose, the proceeds being 
 delivered at the parish presbytery.^ The cure had authority to 
 have the crops of the parishioners estimated two weeks before 
 the harvest, in order to satisfy himself as to the amount of tithes 
 accruing to him. At first the tithe was exacted on grain only ; 
 but when the habitants began to devote attention to the raising 
 of flax, tobacco, vegetables, roots, and the like, the cures in 
 some cases attempted to extend the obligation to these products 
 as well. Against this the people protested, and in the early 
 years of the eighteenth century the matter was taken before 
 the Superior Council. That body promptly decided against the 
 clerical pretensions,^ and from this decision an appeal was taken 
 to the king, who two years later confirmed the action of the 
 council.* 
 
 Churches were erected in the various parishes by one of three 
 means, — by funds provided by friends of the church in France, 
 or by the subscriptions and labor of the people of the parish, or, 
 occasionally, by the seigniors themselves. On application of the 
 cure to the authorities at Quebec, a decree could be had ordering 
 the habitants to furnish either materials or labor in the construc- 
 tion or the repair of the parish church or presbytery. Thus, on 
 the request of the cure of St. Laurent, the inhabitants of that 
 parish were, in 1732, ordered by the intendant to " assemble and 
 estimate the expense of constructing a new church, and to pre- 
 pare a statement of apportionment among all the said habitants 
 that it may be known how much each must furnish toward the 
 building of the said church."^ Having done this, they were, by 
 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 231. It is of interest to note that the parish priests of 
 the province of Quebec still collect a tithe of one twenty-sixth of all grain grown 
 by their parishioners, — a right which has had legal sanction continuously from 
 1679 to the present time. 
 
 2 Ibid. ii. 434. 8 November 18, 1 705, Ibid. 133. 
 
 * July 12, 1707, Ibid. i. 305. ^ Ibid. iii. 284.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 185 
 
 a further ordinance issued later in the same year, ordered to 
 contribute their allotted shares of material and labor ; and the 
 royal officials were instructed to see that they did so. By the 
 provisions of this ordinance the cure could, at his discretion, 
 exempt from contribution any habitants whose poverty would 
 render the exaction a hardship. A number of quite similar ordi- 
 nances relating to the construction of ecclesiastical edifices in 
 other parishes were issued from time to time.^ 
 
 When the church was erected with funds provided from 
 France or by the contributions of the people, the right of ap- 
 pointment to the parish vested in the bishop ; but when the 
 seignior built the church at his own expense it was necessary, 
 down to the closing years of the seventeenth century, to allow 
 him the patronage or advowson.^ This requirement was not 
 viewed with favor either by Laval or by St. Vallier, who sought 
 to restrict its application by refusing to allow the consecration 
 of any seignior's church unless it were built of stone ; and this 
 measure seemed likely to prove effectual from the fact that, 
 without the ceremony of consecration, a church edifice could at 
 best have a missionary and not a fixed cure. Down to 1681 
 only two stone churches were built by lay seigniors.^ 
 
 Those of the seigniors who had erected wooden churches 
 objected strongly to the episcopal policy, and some went so far 
 as to prevent the bishop from undertaking the erection of stone 
 churches within their seigniories. In 1699 the bishop brought 
 the whole matter to the notice of the king, who issued an arret 
 giving him power to proceed with the erection of stone churches 
 in any seigniories in which such had not already been erected, 
 
 1 Cf. Edits et Ordonnances, iii. 205, 216, 217, 303, etc. 
 
 ^ Ibid. i. 232, §§ vi-vii. 
 
 8 " Every one here is puffed up with the greatest vanity; there is not one but pre- 
 tends to be a patron, and wants a cure on his land, yet all are heavily in debt and in 
 the most extreme poverty. Exclusive of that at Quebec, there are, throughout the 
 entire colony, only seven stone parochial churches. These are in the seigniories of 
 the Bishop, of the Jesuits, of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, and in two private seign- 
 iories. The rest are constructed of timber and plank at the expense of the proprie- 
 tors of the fiefs, and of the settlers; the bishop, however, refuses to consecrate them, 
 because, as he says, it is his duty and obligation not to consecrate any buildings ex- 
 cept such as are solid and durable" (Duchesneau to Seignelay, November 13, 1681, 
 Correspondance Generale, v. 275).
 
 1 86 THE SEICmORTAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 and to assume the right of patronage in regard to these. ^ It 
 seems, however, that in actual practice the seigniors were often 
 consulted before appointments were made ; for the episcopal 
 authorities recognized that amicable relations between cure and 
 seignior were highly desirable, and it was always the policy of 
 St. Vallier and Pontbriand to secure this concord. 
 
 In no way, however, did the church in Canada contribute so 
 materially to the development and strengthening of the feudal 
 system in the colony as through its example in successfully 
 clearing, improving, and settling the individual seigniories 
 owned by it and by its subsidiary organizations. From bishop 
 to poorest cure, the hierarchy lent its superior intelligence zeal- 
 ously to the work of developing the material as well as the 
 spiritual interests of the church in New France, and with very 
 marked success. Settlers were brought out under clerical aus- 
 pices and placed upon the ecclesiastical seigniories, and once 
 on the land they were counselled, assisted, and encouraged.^ 
 As early as 1667, Laval was able to point with pride to the fact 
 that his seigniories of Beaupr6 and Isle d'Orleans contained 
 more than one-fourth of the colony's total population ; ^ and 
 from this time down to the close of the French dominion the 
 fiefs of the church never ceased to comprise within their bounds 
 a very substantial percentage of the people of New France. 
 
 Not only were the ecclesiastical seigniories among the most 
 thickly populated, but they were, as Catalogue and others noted, 
 among the best cultivated and the best managed.* The provisions 
 made for the welfare and convenience of the habitants in the 
 way of banal mills, roads, and so on, were on the whole much 
 better than in the lay seigniories ; and there were fewer trivial 
 disputes regarding seigniorial exactions. As one examines the 
 host of petty difficulties which year by year came before the 
 
 1 Edits et OrdotiJiances, \. 279. 
 
 2 On the services of the Jesuits in the agricultural development of the colony, see 
 Y^'CAon, Histoire de la Colonie Fran^aise en Canada, i. 161-164 ; and Rochemon- 
 teix, Les /esuites, i. 154-157. 
 
 ^ In the census of 1667, the total population of the colony was found to be 3,918. 
 Of this number the seigniory of Beaupre contained 667, and that of the Isle d'Orleans 
 426. Cf Censuses of Canada, 1 665-187 1, p. 6. 
 
 * See above, p. 45.
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH. 187 
 
 authorities at Quebec for settlement, one cannot but notice that 
 by far the most of them came from the lay seigniories. The 
 ecclesiastical seigniors and their habitants seem to have settled 
 their troubles at home. 
 
 The grants of seigniories to church institutions and orders 
 were usually accompanied by the right to administer seigniorial 
 justice. The ecclesiastical seigniors, like the laymen, usually 
 received powers of high, middle, and low justice ; ^ but it does 
 not appear that they ever attempted to use these powers in any 
 considerable degree. By virtue of the right of low jurisdiction 
 they frequently enforced the payment of seigniorial dues from 
 recalcitrant habitants, but they seem to have made no serious 
 attempt to exercise the two higher grades of jurisdiction. 
 
 In the earlier days of feudalism in Europe, the clerical seign- 
 iors, bishops, and abbots administered feudal justice within 
 their fiefs, and succeeded in tincturing the customary law of 
 these domains with those principles of the canon law with which 
 the administrators of justice were naturally the most famihar. 
 Ostensibly administering the customary law of the feudal unit, 
 they in many cases applied the much more highly developed 
 canonical jurisprudence. Had the hierarchy of New France 
 assumed its feudal judicial power, it would have been interesting 
 to note how far it would have departed from the Custom of 
 Paris in favor of that system of jurisprudence with which it was 
 more famihar ; but the various clerical officials and orders 
 manifested no desire to exercise judicial authority. Indeed, 
 when the royal court was established at Montreal, the Sulpitians 
 petitioned that their seigniorial judicial powers might be revoked, 
 and secured an ordinance effecting this revocation.^ 
 
 The church in the colony never lost, as in France, the con- 
 fidence of the masses of the people ; the higher ranks in the 
 ecclesiastical hierarchy never lost touch with the lower, or the 
 lower with the people. The Canadian clergy were never re- 
 garded as a privileged order ; on the contrary, they gave to the 
 colony much more than they took from it. If ever there were 
 laborers worthy of their hire, these were the spiritual pioneers 
 
 1 See the grant of the fief of Sillery to the Jesuits in 1697, Titres des Seignetiries, 51. 
 ^ Edits et Ordonnances, i. 276.
 
 1 88 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM AND THE CHURCH, 
 
 of France in the New World. Their influence with the habit- 
 ants was deservedly powerful, and, in so far as this influence 
 was given in support of feudalism, it formed a factor in the de- 
 velopment of the system which is not readily overestimated. 
 The church in New France was the firm friend of both abso- 
 lutism and feudalism, for a stage in history had been reached 
 wherein these were no longer antagonistic, but mutually helpful. 
 The church owed much to both, and to each it made repay- 
 ment in stanch loyalty. 
 
 But despite the support which the seigniorial system in Can- 
 ada received from both state and church, there were circum- 
 stances which, during the closing years of the French era, served 
 greatly to weaken it. The long English wars, which continued 
 with but little interruption from 1745 to 1760, so hampered 
 immigration from France that during this period the number of 
 settlers who came into the seigniories was very small. The wars 
 also laid a heavy strain upon agricultural conditions, for the 
 authorities found it necessary to put into the field practically the 
 entire adult male population. Whenever it was possible, however, 
 these militiamen were allowed to return to their farms during the 
 seeding and harvest seasons. Even in the late summer of 1759, 
 when Montcalm was bending his utmost energies to the task of 
 repelling Wolfe from the fortifications of Quebec, he found it 
 necessary to allow large numbers of his sorely needed defend- 
 ers to go home to gather in the harvests ; otherwise, a success- 
 ful defence would have been followed by a winter of famine, for 
 the English control of the seas rendered the importation of food 
 supplies from France all but impossible. 
 
 Under these circumstances lands went out of cultivation, 
 or were for years left without proper care ; many holdings 
 and even whole seigniories were abandoned ; seigniorial dues 
 remained unpaid ; mills and churches went into decay ; in 
 short, the whole agricultural system became disorganized. The 
 reorganization of economic conditions, more particularly the 
 rearrangement of those which had become entirely deranged by 
 the enormous depreciation of the paper currency during the 
 years preceding the conquest, was the task which first confronted 
 the new British authorities. 
 
 I
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM UNDER BRITISH ADMINIS- 
 TRATION. 
 
 The long struggle between France and Great Britain in 
 North America was virtually brought to a close when, on the 
 eighth day of September, 1760, the Marquis de Vaudreuil and 
 General Jeffrey Amherst, on behalf of their respective sover- 
 eigns, signed the Articles of Capitulation at Montreal.^ In this 
 document, which embodied the agreement on the part of the 
 French to withdraw their remaining military forces from the 
 colony of New France, there were several articles which related 
 either directly or indirectly to the existing system of land ten- 
 ure, and which served in some measure to secure the perpetua- 
 tion of it under the administration of the new suzerain. 
 
 The terms of capitulation stipulated that all religious com- 
 munities and all officers of the church should be preserved in 
 the enjoyment of their property and " in the profits of their 
 seigniories," as well as in all their " privileges, rights, honors, 
 and exemptions." ^ Furthermore, by express provision, " all 
 seigniors of lands, officers of the militia and of justice, all Cana- 
 dians whether in the towns or in the rural districts, all French- 
 men whether settled in or trading to the colony, and all other 
 persons " were guaranteed in the " entire and peaceable posses- 
 sion of their property whether en seigneiirie or en rotiire \en 
 censive^." They were not to be molested under any pretext 
 
 ^ " Articles de Capitulation," in State Paper Office, America and West Indies, 
 xciii. 561-592. 
 
 ■^ Article xxxiv : "Toutes les Communautes, Et tous les Prestres Conserveront 
 Leurs Meubles, La Propriete, Et L'Usufruit des Seigneuries, Et autres biens que les 
 uns et les autres possedent dans la Colonic, de quelque Nature qu'ils soient Et Les 
 ■d. biens seront Conserves dans leurs Privileges, droits, honneurs, et Exemptions." 
 
 i8q
 
 1 90 
 
 BRITISH administration: 
 
 whatever.^ By these articles in the capitulation the British 
 authorities virtually bound themselves to maintain the existing 
 system of land tenure ; for, by guaranteeing that the holders 
 should suffer no loss through any detrimental action on the 
 part of the new government, they assured all seigniors of a 
 continuance of their privileges. 
 
 Acting under instructions from England, General Amherst at 
 once organized a military government for the colony, dividing 
 it for this purpose into three military districts with headquarters 
 at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers respectively. Each 
 district was placed in charge of a military officer, and military 
 courts were established for the hearing of causes both civil and 
 criminal. For the time being the French law, in so far as it 
 could be discovered by the courts, was followed ; but from time 
 to time each of the three district officers issued ordinances 
 within his own jurisdiction, modifying the old laws in such 
 respects as seemed necessary. The seigniors were supported 
 in the exaction of their dues as soon as they had taken the 
 oath of fealty and homage to the representatives of their new 
 sovereign; but they were deprived of their judicial authority, 
 all cases now coming in the first instance before the military 
 courts.^ 
 
 Even before the Peace of Paris was signed. Lord Egremont, 
 secretary of state for the Southern Department, asked the 
 officers in charge of the three districts to send him reports on 
 
 1 Article xxxvii : " Les Seigneurs de Terres, Les Officiers militaires Et de Justice, 
 Les Canadiens, Tant des Villas que des Campagnes Les fran9ois Etablis ou Commer- 
 ^ant dans toute L'Etendue de la Colonic du Canada Et Toutes Autres Personnes que 
 ce puisse Estre, Conserveront L'Entire paisible propviete et possession de leurs biens 
 Seigneuriaux et Roturiers. ... II n'y sera point touche ni fait le moindre domage, 
 sous quelque pretexte que ce soit." 
 
 It has sometimes been said (e.g., by Bourinot, CoJistitulion of Canada, 7) that 
 the Jesuits, RecoUets, and Sulpitians were expressly excepted from the guarantee 
 of proprietary rights until the royal pleasure could be known; but an examination of 
 the articles will show that this exception was made in reference to the operation of 
 Article xxxiii, which pledged a general continuance of ecclesiastical privileges, and 
 not in reference to Article xxxvii, which dealt with rights of property. 
 
 2 Kegne Militaire en Canada, ou Administration Jiidiciaire de ce Pays par les 
 Anglais du 8 Septenibre lybo au 10 Aotit 1764 Cpublished by the Montreal Historical 
 Society, 1872). Cf. also Suite, Le Regime Militaire, 1760-1764, in Royal Society of 
 Canada, Proceedings, 1905, Appendix A.
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. I91 
 
 the state of their respective jurisdictions, and to make recom- 
 mendations regarding the future government of the colony. 
 This they did, each giving an estimate of the total population 
 in his district and expressing his opinion on existing conditions 
 and institutions. General Murray's report shows that his short 
 sojourn in the colony had not given him a very favorable opin- 
 ion of the Canadian seigniors. "They are extremely vain," 
 he wrote, " and have an utter contempt for the trading part of 
 the colony. They were usually provided for in the colonial 
 troops, which consisted of thirty companies. They are in gen- 
 eral poor, except such as have had command of distant posts, 
 when they usually made a fortune in three or four years. . . , 
 They are great tyrants to their vassals, who seldom meet with 
 redress, let their grievances be ever so just." ^ 
 
 Before the British authorities could make any permanent 
 disposition of affairs in Canada, however, a formal relinquish- 
 ment of French claims on the colony had to be secured ; and 
 this was not forthcoming until March 10, 1763, when the 
 Treaty of Paris was ratified by the high contracting parties con- 
 cerned. Among other things, this treaty confirmed the inhabit- 
 ants of Canada in the concessions and privileges guaranteed 
 them by the Articles of Capitulation three years previously, and 
 in addition provided : " The French inhabitants and others who 
 have been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada may 
 retire in all safety and freedom wherever they may think proper, 
 and may sell their estates, provided it be to subjects of His 
 Britannic Majesty." ^ 
 
 A good many landholders in the eastern part of the colony 
 had taken their departure to France immediately after the 
 Articles of Capitulation were signed. Some of these had merely 
 abandoned their lands, others had left them in charge of friends, 
 
 1 This report of June 5, 1762, though in many ways very interesting, shows 
 rather scant knowledge of the real condition of affairs in Canada. It is the work of 
 a man who seems to have made very little study of the questions with which he 
 dealt. It is reprinted in full in Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Gcnerale du Droit 
 Civil Canadien, 520 ff. 
 
 2 Treaty of Paris, article iv. The full text of this treaty may be found in George 
 Chalmers, A Collection of Treaties betiveen Great Britain and other Powers (London, 
 1790), i. 467-483.
 
 192 BRITISH administration: 
 
 and some had sold them in the expectation that such sales would 
 be held valid. Now, when announcement of the formal and 
 final cession of the colony to Great Britain was made, a much 
 larger number took advantage of the privilege extended them 
 of selling their lands and leaving for France. Just how great 
 this hegira was it is not easy to ascertain, for the census enu- 
 merations during the long conflict-period preceding the conquest 
 were very faulty, and the estimates of those who have made 
 special study of the subject vary greatly. The exodus was, 
 however, in all probability not so great as historians have usually 
 supposed. Similarly, there are grave differences of opinion as 
 to the nature of the outflow ; ^ but it is unquestionable that among 
 those who left the colony during the years 1 760-1 765 were 
 most of the former administrative officials, many notaries, and 
 perhaps the majority of the noblesse. In a word, the colony 
 lost many of its natural leaders. On the other hand, English 
 settlers flocked into the country in considerable numbers, and 
 bought the seigniories of those who wished to leave. Many 
 of these Enghsh settlers were wise enough to see that the 
 purchase of seigniories at sacrifice prices was an excellent 
 investment ; for most of the estates included extensive tracts 
 of ungranted lands, which with the increase of the colony in 
 population would gradually rise in value. They saw, too, 
 that with the settlement of the seigniories the dues payable by 
 the habitants would be a source of considerable profit; and, 
 finally, to many of the new arrivals the position and title of 
 seignior seem to have appealed strongly. To the habitants 
 this change was far from acceptable. They had no native re- 
 spect for the new English seigniors, who were to them the repre- 
 sentatives of an alien race and a heretical creed, and who 
 were, besides, prone to insist rigidly upon the letter of their 
 rights, and were too often, it would appear, somewhat over- 
 bearing in their attitude toward their dependents. 
 
 During the period intervening between the capitulation and 
 the signing of the treaty, two seigniorial grants to Englishmen 
 
 ^ On the extent and nature of the exodus, compare the widely divergent views of 
 Garneau (yHistoire du Canada, ii. 393 ff.) and Suite (Z^ Regime Alilitaire, 85-S9). 
 See also below, p. 204, note 2.
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. I93 
 
 were made by General Murray. These were the seigniories 
 of Malbaie (Murray Bay) and Mount Murray, given in 1762, 
 " for faithful services," to Captain John Nairn and Captain 
 Fraser respectively, both of them officers in the regular forces. 
 In the title-deeds or patents conveying these grants the term 
 " seigniory " does not appear ; but in defining the conditions 
 upon which the grants were to be held Murray seems to have 
 made some attempt to follow the general tenor of seigniorial 
 grants made during the old regime. He evidently took for his 
 model the title of some earlier grant made under the custom of 
 the French Vexin and not under the Custom of Paris ; for he 
 provided for the payment of a relief and not of a quint upon 
 mutations of ownership.^ 
 
 Shortly after the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, a royal 
 proclamation was issued (October 7, 1763), making provision for 
 the establishment of a civil administration to replace the military 
 rule which had been maintained since 1760.^ By the terms of 
 this proclamation the government of the colony was vested in 
 the hands of a governor to be appointed by the crown and to be 
 assisted by a council similarly appointed. Provision was made 
 for supplanting the existing legal system by " the law and 
 equity of England in all cases both civil and criminal." The 
 governor in council was empowered to make grants of land, 
 especially as a means of rewarding those who had rendered ser- 
 vice in the army or the navy during the war ; but, since the laws 
 of England were prescribed as the legal system of the colony, 
 
 ^ " I do hereljy give, grant, and concede unto the said Captain John Nairn, his 
 h irs, executors and administrators forever, all that extent of land lying ... to be 
 kni)wn hereafter by the name of Murray Bay ... for and in consideration of the 
 possessor paying liege and homage to His Majesty, his heirs and successors, at his 
 Castle of St. Lewis in Quebec, on each mutation of property, and byway of acknowl- 
 ed^jment a piece of gold of the value of ten shillings with one year's rent of the 
 domain reserved, as customary in this country, together with the woods and rivers, 
 or other appurtenances within the said extent; the right of fishing or fowling on the 
 same therein included, v\ithout hindrance or molestation ; all kinds of traffic with 
 the Tn -ians of the back country hereby specially excepted." This title-deed is not 
 l)rint d in Titres des Seigneuries, but a copy of it will be found in Troi5i'e7ne 
 J^apport et Deliberations du Comite Special de V Assemblee Legislative (185 1 ), 95-96. 
 
 ^ I'his proclamation will be found at full length in Doutre and Lareau, Histoire 
 G'n'rale du Droit Civil Canadien, 330 ff.
 
 194 BRITISH administration: 
 
 he was, presumably, to make such grants in free and common 
 socage and not en seigneurie or en censive. 
 
 Two months after the issue of the proclamation a lengthy- 
 code of instructions was sent to Governor Murray by the home 
 authorities, laying down definite regulations both in regard to 
 the attitude to be taken with respect to existing holdings of 
 land and as to the policy to be followed in future.-^ In the first 
 place, the governor was instructed to require all those who 
 claimed to hold grants made to them before the conclusion of 
 peace to present the same for registration and examination to 
 the secretary of the governor's council at Quebec. Such titles, 
 when found valid, were to be respected ; but, for the future, 
 grants were to be made only in strict accordance with detailed 
 regulations given in the instructions. These provided, in gen- 
 eral, that, since great inconveniences had "arisen in many of 
 our colonies in America, from the granting of excessive quan- 
 tities of land to particular persons," who had " never cultivated 
 or settled them," and had " thereby prevented others more in- 
 dustrious from improving them," particular care was to be taken 
 to avoid the practice of making to settlers larger grants than 
 they could handle properly. The governor was instructed to 
 observe the general rule of granting one hundred acres of land 
 to the head of a family, with an additional fifty acres " for every 
 white or black man, woman, or child, of which such person's 
 family shall consist at the actual time of making the grant." If 
 it appeared that the grantee possessed the means and the inten- 
 tion of cultivating a larger area, the governor was authorized 
 to depart from the foregoing rules ; but in no case was a single 
 family to receive more than one thousand acres. The terms 
 under which the grants were to be made were very simple : 
 after two years from the date of the grant an annual quit-rent 
 of two shillings for every hundred acres was to become due 
 and payable to the crown forever ; and within three years the 
 grantee was to clear three acres for every fifty held by him. 
 
 ^ "Instructions to Our trusty and well-beloved James Murray, Esquire, Our Cap- 
 tain-General and Governor-in-Chief, in and over Our Province of Quebec in America," 
 December 7, 1763, in State Paper Office, Board of Trade, Canada, vol. i. These 
 instructions are printed in Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Generale, etc., 55^-572, and 
 in the Report on Canadian Archives for 1904, pp. 193-210.
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 195 
 
 Failure to fulfil either obligation was to entail forfeiture of the 
 whole grant. 
 
 In the instructions a desire was expressed that the colony 
 should furnish mast timber for use in the royal navy, and to 
 this end the governor was instructed to reserve all such timber 
 land. The policy pursued under French domination had 
 been to grant lands with a specific reservation in the title-deeds 
 that all oak and pine timber should be kept for the king's use.^ 
 The new policy proposed the adoption of a somewhat different 
 course; for the governor was instructed not to grant the best 
 timber lands at all, but to see that these were held as royal 
 reservations. 
 
 It was apparently the intention of the British authorities, as 
 evidenced by these instructions, that all future grants should be 
 made in free and common socage, subject to the payment of a 
 perpetual but merely nominal quit-rent to the crown ; and since, 
 by the proclamation of 1763, the English law of real property 
 had become the land law of the colony, this new policy seemed 
 the only logical one.^ It was not long, however, before the at- 
 tempt to administer English land law encountered difficulties. 
 A system of courts was established ; but the judges and officials 
 were Englishmen, who knew little and cared less about existing 
 conditions in the colony. The new courts, therefore, in their 
 attempt to apply the principles of English law to the cases 
 which came before them, soon found themselves floundering in 
 a maze of complications, inconsistencies, and contradictions, a 
 situation which convinced both judges and suitors that the task 
 of deciding disputes between seigniors and habitants by the 
 rules of English law and procedure was an impossible one. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 74. 
 
 2 I do not discuss here the vexed question whether the Enghsh law was validly 
 introduced by the proclamation of 1763. It is maintained by some legal writers that 
 the proclamation did not actually introduce the English law, but merely gave Murray 
 the power to do so with the advice and consent of his council and the approval 
 of a representative assembly. This power, it is claimed, was never exercised, be- 
 cause no representative assembly was called into existence. It does not seem 
 necessary, for the purposes of the present study, to examine the merits of this con- 
 tention; but reference may be made to two leading cases in which the point is dis- 
 cussed, — Stuart wj. Bowman, 1S51, 2 Lower Canada Reports, 369, and Wilcox z/^. 
 Wilcox, 1857, 8 Lower Canada Reports, 34.
 
 196 BRITISH administration: 
 
 Accordingly, Governor Murray, with the consent of his council, 
 allowed the courts, for the time being, to apply the old French 
 law to such civil cases as could not otherwise be satisfactorily 
 settled. This action was communicated to the home authorities, 
 and apparently met with their approval; for in 1766 they issued 
 instructions " that in all suits and actions relating to the titles 
 of land, and the descent, alienation, settlement, and encum- 
 brances of real property, and also in the distribution of personal 
 property in cases of intestacy, and the mode of assigning and 
 conveying it, they [the courts] do govern themselves in their 
 proceedings, judgment, and decision, by the local customs and 
 usages which have hitherto prevailed and governed within the 
 province, using and applying the said usages and customs to 
 the cases coming before them in like manner as the customs 
 and usages of Normandy are appHed in cases from Jersey before 
 the lords of our privy council." ^ 
 
 For the time being, then, the courts applied English law in 
 all cases save those specifically excepted as above. In this way 
 the legal chaos was somewhat relieved, but by no means entirely 
 so ; for not only were there inherent difficulties connected with 
 the attempt to administer a system of law which was entirely 
 strange to those who came within its operation, but the judges 
 and officials seem to have been exceedingly incapable and 
 untactful. Most of them, having no knowledge of French, 
 could carry on their proceedings only with the aid of an inter- 
 preter ; and as practically all of them were paid by fees, they 
 had ample opportunities for extortion, which the covetous were 
 apparently not slow to seize. Governor Murray branded the 
 new English arrivals in the colony, more particularly the traders, 
 as the most immoral collection of men he had ever known. 
 
 This was the condition of affairs when Murray, in 1766, 
 returned to England, giving over his post of governor to Gen- 
 eral Guy Carleton (afterwards Lord Dorchester). On his ar- 
 rival in England, Murray prepared and presented to the Earl of 
 Shelburne, who as secretary of state for the Southern Depart- 
 ment had charge of colonial affairs, a comprehensive report 
 
 1 " Instructions to the Hon'''^- James Murray, governor of Canada," June 24, 
 J 766, in State Paper Oftice, Board of Trade, Canada, vol. xv.
 
 BRITISH administration: 197 
 
 on the condition of the colony. This report is an interesting- 
 one, couched in vigorous language. It begins by giving an 
 estimate of the population and wealth of the colony as re- 
 capitulated from the census of 1765. It then proceeds, in 
 marked contrast to his report of 1762, to comment rather 
 favorably upon the seigniorial system of land tenure. "The 
 seigniors," writes Murray, " though not rich, are in a situation 
 to support their dignity. The inhabitants, their tenanciers, 
 who pay only an annual quit-rent of about a dollar for one hun- 
 dred acres, are at their ease and comfortable. They have 
 been accustomed to respect and obey their noblesse, their ten- 
 ures being military in the feudal manner. They have shared 
 with them the dangers of the field, and natural affection has 
 been increased in proportion to the calamities which have been 
 common to both from the conquest of their country. As they 
 have been taught to respect their superiors, and are not yet 
 intoxicated with the abuse of liberty, they are shocked at the 
 abuse which their noblesse have received from the EngHsh 
 traders and lawyers since the civil government took place." 
 He goes on to speak in the most scathing terms of the char- 
 acter and conduct of the new English settlers : " The Canadian 
 noblesse were hated by them because their birth and behavior 
 entitled them to respect ; the peasants were abhorred because 
 they were saved from the oppression they were threatened 
 with." It was from this class, he says, that the judges and 
 officials of the colony had been chosen during the years 
 1 763-1 766. "Magistrates were made and juries composed 
 from four hundred and fifty contemptible sutlers and trad- 
 ers. . . . The judge pitched upon to conciliate the minds of sev- 
 enty-five thousand foreigners to the laws and government of 
 Great Britain was taken from a jail, entirely ignorant of law 
 and of the language of the people." Not one of the officials 
 of administration, he declares, understood the language of the 
 people. 1 
 
 Even before Murray's report was made the colonial office 
 had undertaken an investigation of the causes of legal dis- 
 
 1 Murray to Shelburne, August 20, 1 766, Canadian Archives, Ilaldimand Collec- 
 tion, B. 8, pp. 1-128.
 
 ig8 BRITISH ADMUVISTRATIOAT. 
 
 order in the colony, and had commissioned the law officers 
 of the crown to report some means of remedying the con- 
 dition of affairs. During the early summer of 1766 these 
 officials presented a list of recommendations which, on the 
 whole, looked toward a further compromise between the two 
 systems of law. In cases affecting land tenure and inheritance 
 and the distribution of personal property in the event of in- 
 testacy, they proposed that the French law should be retained ; 
 but " in all personal actions grounded upon debts, promises, 
 contracts, and agreements, and upon wrongs proper to be 
 compensated," they suggested that the courts apply "those 
 substantial maxims of law and justice which are everywhere 
 the same." ^ 
 
 As the home authorities took no action on either of these 
 reports except to confirm the existing arrangements, Governor 
 Carleton turned his attention to a personal investigation of the 
 matter. Carleton had already spent some time in the colony 
 as an officer of the regular forces, and was therefore fully 
 conversant with the unsatisfactory condition of things. His 
 personal inclination was toward the restoration of French law 
 for the decision of all civil cases. One difficulty, however, lay 
 in the fact that the so-called civil law was not accessible in 
 written form ; it consisted not only of the Custom of Paris, but 
 of the whole mass of edicts, ordinances, declarations, and 
 decrees which had been issued either to supplement or to 
 modify the custom. As a first step, therefore, the governor 
 requested a number of " Canadian gentlemen well skilled in the 
 laws of France " to make a compilation of the civil laws of the 
 French period, in order that at least the most important of them 
 might be rendered accessible. This work was done during the 
 next half-dozen years.^ 
 
 1 Report of Attorney-General Yorke and Solicitor-General de Grey, April 14, 
 1766, in Smith, History of Canada, ii. 35 ff. 
 
 2 The compilation, when finished, was issued in four parts, three of them " drawn 
 up by a Select Committee of Canadian Gentlemen well skilled in the Laws of France 
 and of that Province." The titles were : ( i ) An Abstract of those Parts of the Custom 
 of the Viscounty and Provostship of Paris, which were received and practised in the 
 Province of Quebec in the time of the French Government ; (2) The Sequel of the 
 Abstract . . . containing the thirteen latter Titles of the said Abstract ; (3) An
 
 BRITISH administration: 199 
 
 It was Carleton's earnest wish that the home authorities might 
 be brought to see the desirability of reestablishing the old juris- 
 prudence (especially now that it was being compiled) as the 
 civil law of the colony ; and it was with this end in view that on 
 Christmas Eve, 1767, he despatched to the Earl of Shelburne a 
 long communication setting forth his views on the subject. 
 Carleton first reminded the British authorities that they were 
 not now dealing " with a migration of Britons who brought with 
 them the laws of England, but with a populous and long-estab- 
 lished colony reduced by the king's arms to submit to his 
 dominion on certain conditions;" that their laws and customs, 
 though widely different from those of England, were " founded 
 on natural justice and equity," and "their honors, profits, 
 and property depended on these laws and customs ; . . . 
 and that this system of laws established subordination from the 
 highest to the lowest and preserved the harmony of the colony 
 until our arrival." After reminding the minister of these facts, 
 the governor proceeded to express the opinion that the action of 
 the home authorities in overturning in an hour this complex 
 system and in supplanting it by a system of " laws ill-adapted 
 to the genius of the Canadians, to the situation of the province, 
 and to the interest of Great Britain, unknown and unpublished," 
 had been not only an error " but a sort of severity which had 
 never before been practised by any conqueror, even where the 
 people had, without capitulation, submitted to his will and dis- 
 cretion." 
 
 He then pointed out that, notwithstanding the action of the 
 home government in introducing English civil law into the 
 colony, the people continued to " regulate all their transactions 
 by their ancient laws, though unknown and unauthorized in the 
 
 Abstract of the Criminal Laws that were in force in the Province of Quebec in the 
 time of the French Government ; (4) An Abstract of the several Royal Edicts, and 
 Declarations, and Provincial Regulations and Ordina^ices, that were in force in 
 the Province of Quebec in the time of the French Government, and of the Com- 
 missions of the several Governours-general and Intendants of the said Province, 
 during the same Period. The last part was prepared by " Francis Joseph Cugnet, 
 Esquire, Secretary to the Governour and Council of the said Province, for the French 
 Language." All four parts were published in London in 1 772-1 773. After the 
 reestablishment of French civil law in the colony in 1774, this compilation became a 
 standard for the courts.
 
 200 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 courts, where most of these transactions would be declared 
 invalid." He attributed the absence of much more violent 
 manifestations of discontent among the people to the fact that 
 the enormity of the change was not fully recognized by them, 
 but declared that the recognition of it would in time cause conster- 
 nation amongst them. The new English courts, he affirmed, had 
 done little or nothing to alleviate the legal chaos. " They 
 have," said he, " introduced all the chicanery of Westminster 
 Hall into this impoverished province, where few fortunes can 
 bear the expense and delay of a law suit." Carleton, therefore, 
 strongly urged the home authorities to repeal entirely the 
 ordinance establishing English civil law in the colony, and, "fol- 
 lowing the precedent established by Edward the First after the 
 conquest of Wales," ^ to decree the reestablishment of the old 
 French law duly codified, with such alterations as might seem 
 necessary. 
 
 With his despatch Carleton enclosed the draft of an ordi- 
 nance which he had at first intended to issue himself with the 
 assent of his council, but which on reflection he had deemed of 
 sufficient importance to submit to the home government.^ This 
 ordinance proposed to enact, among other provisions, " that all 
 laws and customs which prevailed in this province . . . concern- 
 ing the rights, privileges, and pre-eminences of tenures, both 
 such as were held immediately of the crown and such as were 
 held of subjects ; and concerning the inheritances of the said 
 lands upon the death of any of the proprietors thereof, and 
 concerning the forfeiture, confiscating, re-annexing or re-uniting 
 to the domain of the lord, escheat, reversion, or other devolution 
 whatsoever of the said lands, either to the King's Majesty or to 
 any of His Majesty's subjects of whom they are held; and 
 concerning the power of devising or bequeathing any of the 
 said lands by a last will or testament, and concerning the power 
 of alienating the same by the proprietors thereof in their life- 
 time; and concerning the power of limiting, hypothecating, 
 charging, and in any way encumbering or affecting any lands in 
 
 1 Carleton to Shelburne, December 24, 1 767, in State Paper Office, Board of 
 Trade, Canada, vol. vi, No. 23. 
 
 2 This draft accompanies Carleton's despatch in the State Paper Office. 
 
 I
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 201 
 
 the province, shall continue in full force and vigor until they are 
 changed in some of these particulars by ordinances made for 
 that purpose." 
 
 The ordinance proposed to extend its terms " not only to all 
 lands in this province held immediately of the crown by grants 
 made by the French king before the conquest of the country, 
 and to all lands held under the immediate tenants of the crown 
 who are commonly called seigniors, by grants made by the said 
 seigniors to inferior tenants or vassals before the conquest, but 
 likewise to such lands as have been granted by the said seign- 
 iors to the said inferior tenants since the conquest, and likewise 
 to all such lands as shall be hereafter granted by the said seign- 
 iors to the said inferior tenants or vassals ; both those that shall 
 hereafter be made, and those that have been made already, shall 
 be subject to the same rules, restrictions, and conditions as were 
 lawfully in force concerning them in the time of the French 
 government, at or immediately before the said conquest of the 
 country by the British arms." A final clause in the proposed 
 ordinance made provision that lands granted by His Majesty 
 since the conquest in free and common socage should continue 
 to be so held. 
 
 As the home authorities were awaiting the compilation of the 
 French civil law before coming to a decision, no immediate 
 acceptance of Carleton's recommendation took place. The 
 work on the laws was hurried on during the spring of 1768; 
 and in April the governor was able to send to England the first 
 part of the compilation, containing an abstract of those parts of 
 the Custom of Paris that had been recognized in the colony. 
 Meanwhile his secretary, Cugnet, busied himself with the ab- 
 stract of the edicts and ordinances. In transmitting the first 
 part of the compilation to the Earl of Shelburne, Carleton again 
 argued at some length in favor of retaining intact the old sys- 
 tem of land tenure. " The Canadian tenures differ, it is true," 
 he wrote, " from those in the other parts of His Majesty's 
 American dominions, but if confirmed (and I cannot see how 
 it can be well avoided without entirely oversetting the proper- 
 ties of the people), will ever secure a proper subordination from 
 this province to Great Britain." Governor Carleton likewise
 
 202 BRITISH administration: 
 
 expressed a desire that he might be authorized to make grants 
 en seigneiirie and en censive under the provisions of the old law 
 as well as in free and common socage.^ 
 
 But not all the officials in the colony were of the same mind 
 as the governor. One of those who differed very decidedly 
 from the royal representative was Francois Maseres, the attor- 
 ney-general. Maseres was of French descent, his ancestors 
 having gone over to England with many other Huguenots when 
 the Edict of Nantes was revoked, toward the close of the seven- 
 teenth century. In his sympathies, however, the attorney-gen- 
 eral was thoroughly English, and his schooling in English law 
 had given him a veritably Blackstonian love of his profession. 
 Now, as Carleton desired to get the fullest possible information 
 regarding the legal conditions and necessities of the colony, he 
 had asked Maseres, among others, for a report elaborating his 
 views and opinions. This request the attorney-general complied 
 with early in 1769. 
 
 As might have been anticipated, Maseres's report set forth 
 opinions which ran directly counter to the personal views of the 
 governor ; for in general the writer insisted that the restoration 
 of the entire fabric of French civil law would be a misfortune 
 both for the colony and for Great Britain. The retention of 
 that part of the old jurisprudence which dealt with real property 
 seemed to Maseres justifiable enough ; but farther than this he 
 was not prepared to go. He was of the opinion that the people 
 in general were satisfied with the law as it stood, and that their 
 complaints arose from the expense and delays which accompanied 
 the administration of it. What was needed, he thought, was a 
 reform of the judicature and not of the law.^ This report was 
 a disappointment to Carleton, who wrote to the home authorities 
 deploring the " narrow prejudices " of his attorney-general, 
 which he attributed to his " having conversed more with books 
 than with men." ^ 
 
 1 Carleton to Shelburne, April 12, 1768, in State Paper Office, America and West 
 Indies, vol. cccxxvi, No. 33. 
 
 2 Francois Maseres, Draught of an Act . . . /or settling the Laws of Quebec (Lon- 
 don [1771]). 
 
 2 Carleton to Hillsborough, October 3, 1769, in State Paper Office, America and 
 West Indies, vol. cccxxvii.
 
 BRITISH administration: 203 
 
 The governor had now apparently come to the conclusion 
 that the concurrence of the home authorities in his own plans 
 could be secured only as the result of a personal visit to Eng- 
 land; and, to this end, in the following year (1770) he obtained 
 a short leave of absence from the province. He was firmly 
 convinced that the progress of the colony was being grievously 
 hindered by the unsettled condition of its legal system. The 
 people, for instance, were following the Enghsh system of 
 conveyancing as simpler and less expensive than the French, 
 even though it did not lend itself to the existing form of 
 tenure. The seigniors were generally disregarding the pro- 
 vision in the Arret of Marly (171 1) that no entry fee should be 
 exacted from habitants for grants of land, but that holdings 
 en censive should be freely conceded at the rates customary 
 in the neighborhood. Many of them were refusing to pay 
 their quint, some on the ground that the governor in council 
 had no right to revive the Custom of Paris in part, and some 
 on the ground that they had not been called upon to render 
 fealty and homage, a duty which was, by the custom, a pre- 
 requisite of the exaction. Many seigniors were exacting dues 
 and services to which they were not entitled, and many habit- 
 ants were refusing to render even their proper obligations. 
 All this disorder served to produce a torrent of litigation 
 which the inefficient judicial organization was utterly unable 
 to stem with any approach to satisfaction. 
 
 On his arrival in England, Carleton laid the question be- 
 fore the authorities and recommended action. Immediate action 
 upon a matter so important was not easy to secure ; neverthe- 
 less the Board of Trade agreed to recommend to the king the 
 expediency of giving permission for further grants en seigneiirie 
 in the colony. ^ On June 27, 1771, the king in council issued 
 instructions to the lieutenant-governor " revoking all His Maj- 
 esty's former instructions for granting lands in the colony, and 
 empowering the governor, with the advice of the council, to 
 grant the lands which remain subject to His Majesty's disposal, 
 in fief or seigniory, as hath been practised heretofore, ante- 
 
 1 Report of the Council for Trade to the King, April 24, 1770, in State Paper 
 Office, Board of Trade, Canada, vol. xvi.
 
 204 BRITISH administration: 
 
 cedent to the conquest of Canada ; omitting, however, in such 
 grants, the reservation of the exercise of such judicial powers, 
 as hath been long disused within the said province." ^ 
 
 The practical importance of these new instructions was not 
 great. During the years intervening between 1771 and the 
 outbreak of the Revolutionary War, there were numerous appli- 
 cations for grants of land in the colony, but in very few cases 
 were grants of seigniories dtpsired ; almost invariably the appli- 
 cants asked for concessions in free and common socage. The 
 instructions are important mainly as showing that the British 
 authorities had come to the determination, not only to preserve 
 intact the seigniorial system of the French era, but to give 
 opportunity for its further extension. Wise or unwise as the 
 action of the British authorities on this occasion may be deemed, 
 it was perhaps the only step possible in view of the development 
 of affairs since the conquest ; for never, perhaps, has any colony 
 been placed in such a peculiar position with respect to the tra- 
 ditions of its own past as was Canada after 1760. After the 
 conquest many of the higher officials of administration and of 
 justice took their departure, carrying with them the confidential 
 archives, and thus leaving the colony with neither living nor 
 dead depositaries of the colonial law ; for the officials who 
 stayed behind were not the most capable of preserving a cor- 
 rect tradition of the legal spirit of the old regime.^ New 
 rulers and leaders arrived, not only ignorant of the tongue of 
 those among whom they came to live, and strangers to existing 
 laws, usages, and modes of thought and feeling, but bringing 
 with them the opinions and maxims of a nation which was of 
 all nations the least akin to France. The newcomers were, 
 moreover, men who were not at all prepared to seize, or even 
 to try to grasp, the peculiarities of the juristic system which 
 they sought to supersede, whether such had to do with the pre- 
 
 1 Additional Instructions for Governor Carleton, June 27, 1771, in State Paper 
 Office, Board of Trade, Canada, vol. vii. These instructions were received and en- 
 tered on the records of the council at Quebec, June 30, 1772. They are printed in 
 the Report on Canadian Archives for 1904, p. 228. 
 
 2 This seems to be shown by subsequent events, despite the fact that, as Judge 
 Baby has pointed out (^U Ex ode des Classes Diris^eantes a la Cession du Canada, 
 Montreal, 1899), a very considerable portion of the official class remained in Canada..
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 205 
 
 rogatives of the French crown, or with the confusion of execu- 
 tive, legislative, and judicial functions which pervaded the whole 
 French colonial system, or with the uncertain and purely com- 
 mendatory character habitually attaching to its juridical acts, 
 or with the vast and complex mass of rights of person and 
 property subsisting under it. Under the French rule, for ex- 
 ample, the governor and intendant had been wont to exercise 
 a more than praetorian power in respect to land grants and the 
 conditions of land tenure. We have the testimony of one of 
 these officers that they could not, under the circumstances of the 
 colony, follow the strict rules of the Custom of Paris, no matter 
 how much they might be disposed to do so ; for any strict 
 adherence to it would have resulted in gross injustice in many 
 individual cases.^ 
 
 The administration of the land laws under the old system 
 was therefore exceedingly elastic. Though customary law is 
 not by nature very flexible, in this case the possession by the 
 intendant and council of wide discretionary powers had permit- 
 ted elasticity in its application. Under the new government all 
 this was changed. The executive authorities had now no judi- 
 cial powers; the judiciary had no discretion but to follow the 
 law wherever it could be discerned. It is no doubt true that in 
 most cases the new English courts strove to discover the law 
 and to follow it ; but by seeming analogies in English law they 
 were too often misled to a misinterpretation of the ancient land 
 laws of the province. 
 
 Perhaps the most common as well as the most natural error 
 made by the new courts in this particular lay in their attempt 
 to apply to en censive lands the laws and customs relating to 
 English tenure in copyhold. In England copyhold lands were 
 governed largely, almost entirely, indeed, by the unwritten cus- 
 toms of the various manors ; the copyholder's possession of his 
 land was secure so long as he rendered the customary obligation 
 to the lord of the manor. When, therefore, the colonial judges 
 had to decide questions concerning eti censive lands, they sought 
 to discover the customs of the seigniory and to apply these to 
 the cases in hand. The very term " coutuine'' served to mis- 
 
 1 See Raudot to Pontchartrain, November 10, 1707, cited above, p. 124.
 
 2o6 BRITISH administration: 
 
 lead them. As a matter of fact, during the French period no 
 stress had been laid on the custom of the seigniory except in a 
 single particular, — namely, when land within a seigniory was 
 granted by the royal authorities because the seignior himself 
 refused to concede at reasonable rates. ^ The rights and respon- 
 sibilities of seignior and habitant respectively, however, were 
 regulated, not by any local seigniorial custom, but by the Cus- 
 tom of Paris, which applied throughout the colony. 
 
 This Custom of Paris, moreover, was not unwritten law, 
 like the customary law of the English manors ; it was, like the 
 other French coiitmnes, a written code, systematically drawn 
 up and enacted by authority. In the language of jurispru- 
 dence, it was statutory and not customary law. Although it 
 was originally formed by the crystallization of a mass of cus- 
 tomary rules, the perpetuation of the term "custom" rendered 
 little service save to mislead. In a word, the English judges 
 did not seem to grasp the fact that the Custom of Paris was 
 a written code of law, subject to modification at any time by 
 the authority possessing legislative power in France and in 
 the colony. They persistently attached too much weight to 
 " customary " rates and " customary " services, and too little 
 both to the written contracts held by the habitants and to the 
 written laws of the land.^ Again and again seigniors were 
 
 1 See above, p. 89. 
 
 2 Precedents had been set for the judges by the decisions of the military courts 
 which were established during the period of military rule, 1 759-1763. An example 
 of the somewhat peculiar attitude taken by these courts is given in the case of Le 
 Due vs. Hunaut, decided by the military court for the district of Montreal in 1762. 
 By the deed of certain en censive lands in the seigniory of Isle Perrot, executed in 
 1 718, the defendant Hunaut had been placed under obligation to pay the seignior 
 Le Due " one half minot of wheat and ten sols per year for each superficial arpent" 
 within the grant. Hunaut now appealed to the court against this exaction, on the 
 ground that it was higher than the rate customary in the colony. The court decided 
 that the rate stipulated in the deed must have been " an error of the notary," and 
 ordered that in future the seignior should exact only "the usual rate at which lands 
 are granted in this colony, that is, one sol for each superficial arpent and one 
 half minot of wheat for each arpent in front by twenty in depth "(^i?^/^^^r of 
 Arrets of the Military Council of Montreal, April 20, 1762). As has been shown in 
 this study (above, ch. v), the court was quite in error in accepting any definite rate 
 as " usual" throughout the colony. The habitant was entitled, after 1711, to demand 
 a grant at the rate customary in the neighborhood ; but if he chose to accept a 
 grant at a higher rate the right of the seignior to exact such dues was incontestable.
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 20/ 
 
 called upon to prove that they had in the past exacted certain 
 dues and services from their habitants ; and having given this 
 proof they received judgment compelling the habitants to con- 
 tinue the payments. Throughout the French period there had 
 been no dearth of cases in which the seignior enforced unwar- 
 ranted exactions as the price of the habitant's general igno- 
 rance : too often he repaid the confidence of his dependents 
 by abusing his powers. When, however, any such case came 
 to the notice of the authorities, a prompt end was made to the 
 seigniorial abuse, and in most instances a penalty was imposed. 
 To the French authorities a seigniorial claim did not gain va- 
 lidity through long assertion. The only sources of seigniorial 
 privileges were the Custom of Paris, the deeds of concession 
 embodying the contract made by the seignior with the origi- 
 nal grantee, and the various edicts, ordinances, and decrees of 
 the higher civil authorities. 
 
 The provision which revived the old French law in all cases 
 affecting the tenure of lands and the inheritance of real property 
 did not, therefore, set the lands of the colony back under the old 
 legal system, although this was most certainly what it had in- 
 tended to do. It placed them rather under what the judges 
 could discover to have been the customs and usages of the 
 period before the conquest. Such a situation was, naturally, 
 very much more to the advantage of the seigniors than to that 
 of the habitants.^ Prior to the conquest the habitants had had 
 a double protection in the judicial power of the courts and the 
 administrative jurisdiction of the intendant. Of the two the 
 latter was by all means the more effective, and of it the habit- 
 ants were now deprived. 
 
 The three steps taken by the British authorities for the per- 
 petuation of the feudal system in Canada may at this point be 
 recapitulated. They were the guaranteeing to all landholders of 
 
 1 On this point the Report of the Commissioners of 1843 declared: "However 
 unfounded the pretension of the seignior might have been considered in the Court 
 of the Intendant, he has in the Courts of later creation invariably been successful in 
 all his contests with his tenants, with the exception of a single instance, which 
 occurred in the Court of King's Bench at Montreal in 1828" ( Titles and Documents, 
 i. 66). This exception was the case of McCallum vs. Grey, King's Bench, April 18, 
 1828.
 
 2o8 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 their vested rights, the retention of the old law in all cases 
 relating to the tenure and inheritance of landed property, and 
 the granting to the authorities of permission to continue the 
 concession of seigniories. All three measures together did not, 
 however, secure the maintenance of the old system intact : the 
 framework was retained, but the spirit which characterized 
 the system was gone. For this one can scarcely blame the 
 British authorities either at home or in the colony, since they had 
 endeavored to buttress the old tenure in so far as this could be 
 done by official action. Nor should one overlook the difficulties 
 which even the best of courts would have encountered under 
 the peculiar circumstances ; for, even had the justices been dis- 
 posed to study thoroughly the old system of law, — as they 
 were not, — they would have found the task bewildering. The 
 various sources of the law were difficult to get together, and 
 when collected they presented little that was attractive to an 
 English jurist. The colonial ordinances and decrees were still 
 in manuscript, unarranged, unindexed, to some extent incom- 
 plete, and, above all, written in French, in a hand very hard to 
 read. Since, then, the customs of the country were so much 
 easier to discover than the law, it is not surprising that men 
 trained in the common law of England should have sought 
 the former as their rule of decision and neglected any serious 
 attempt to ferret out the latter. During the dozen years inter- 
 vening between the conquest and the compilation of the French 
 law in 1772, the British officials and judges had thus, from the 
 very nature of things, little accurate grasp of the old jurispru- 
 dence. 
 
 But to return to the mission of Carleton. The governor had 
 proceeded to England in the autumn of 1770, with the intention 
 of being absent about six months ; but various circumstances 
 combined to keep him there for four full years, the affairs 
 of the colony being administered meantime by a lieutenant- 
 governor, the Hon. H. T. Cramahe. Carleton, upon his arrival 
 in England, lost no time in emphasizing to the ministry his desire 
 for the full restoration of the old French civil law. At first the 
 ministry was not willing to accede to this proposal, especially 
 since the opinion of Maseres had been recorded against it.
 
 BRITISH administration: 209 
 
 Moreover, the question of legal reform in the colony had now 
 become part of the larger question of political reform. The 
 movement for an elective legislature was gaining force ; ^ and 
 the ministry, naturally enough, concluded that the decision 
 of the legal question should depend to some extent upon the 
 disposition of the political. 
 
 The preHminary step to action was taken when the ministry 
 requested the three chief law officers of the crown, — the 
 attorney-general, the solicitor-general, and the advocate-general 
 respectively, — to prepare reports upon Carleton's recommenda- 
 tions. The reports of these three officials, presented during 
 the years 1 772-1 773, were practically at one in recommending 
 the reestablishment, substantially intact, of the whole of the old 
 civil code.^ There can be little doubt that these reports carried 
 considerable weight with the ministry, and that they were in no 
 small degree responsible for the legal provisions of the Quebec 
 Bill, which was introduced into the British Parliament during 
 the spring of 1774. 
 
 By the terms of the Quebec Bill the criminal law of England 
 was to be maintained in the colony ; but "in all cases relative to 
 property and civil rights " resort was to be had to the old civil 
 law through French modes of judicial procedure. Either sys- 
 tem of law might be modified, however, by ordinances of the 
 colonial government; and it was expressly provided that owners 
 of land might bequeath their real property according to English 
 rules of bequest, if they chose to do so. Other provisions of 
 the bill ratified the guarantees made to Canadians by the 
 capitulation of Montreal and the subsequent Treaty of Paris, 
 and confirmed the Roman Catholic clergy in the enjoyment of 
 their " accustomed rights and dues." 
 
 ^ The general history of this movement is traced in Christie, History of the Late 
 Province of Lower Canada, vol. i, and in Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. v. 
 
 2 The reports of Solicitor-General Wedderburn and of Advocate-General James 
 Marriott dealt exhaustively with the whole legal situation in the colony. Wedderburn's 
 report, presented December 6, 1772, is printed in Christie, History of the Late Prov- 
 ince of Lower Canada, i. 27 ff., and in Doutre and Lareau, Histoire Generale du 
 Droit Civil Canadien, 643-658. Marriott's report, submitted on May 3, 1773, was 
 published in the following year under the title A Plan of a Code of Laws for 
 Quebec (London, 1774). An excellent summary of its contents is given in Doutre 
 and Lareau, Histoire Generale, etc., 658-669.
 
 210 BRITISH administration: 
 
 The debates in Parliament on the Quebec Bill developed 
 considerable opposition to these provisions. One of the points 
 emphasized was that, since the French civil code made no 
 provision for jury trials, questions involving important interests, 
 such as titles to land, would, under the new bill, be decided by a 
 judge alone.^ Indeed, the French civil procedure in general 
 did not commend itself to most Englishmen. Under that system 
 the evidence in a case was taken at a court of inquiry at which 
 no judge was present ; the record of the evidence and exhibits 
 was then laid before the judge, who was addressed by the 
 advocates of the opposing parties on the matters contained in 
 it and on the points of law involved in the case. The judge 
 did not come into contact with the witnesses. Now, while this 
 procedure differed very decidedly from that followed in civil 
 cases at English law, it did not differ so much from English 
 actions at equity ; but this seems to have been overlooked by 
 those who opposed the legal provisions of the bill in Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 In due time, however, the Quebec Bill passed through 
 Parliament and became law, going into operation on the iirst 
 day of May, 1775.^ In America, as well as in England, most 
 of the provisions of the bill called forth criticism, the legal 
 clause being among the number. Perhaps the most impor- 
 tant of the criticisms offered was that of the framers of the 
 Declaration of Independence, who enumerated among the 
 arbitrary and injudicious acts of the home authorities that of 
 "abolishing the free system of English law in a neighboring 
 province." It may very well be doubted, however, whether any 
 other course would have been expedient. The attempt to 
 impose English law relating to civil rights upon the province 
 had failed miserably, and the endeavor to retain parts of the 
 two systems side by side had produced legal chaos of the worst 
 sort. It is therefore not strange that the home authorities 
 should have decided to adopt the third alternative, that of 
 restoring the old system. On the assumption that Quebec 
 
 1 Cavendish, Debates of the House of Commons in the year 1774, on the Bill for . . . 
 the Govern/nent of the Province of Quebec (ed. J. Wright, London, 1839). 
 
 2 14 George III, c. 83, printed in Houston, Constitutional Documents, 90-96.
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 211 
 
 would for all time remain predominantly French in language, 
 traits, and traditions, their decision was neither unnatural nor 
 unreasonable. It certainly was not reached hastily, or without 
 due consideration of objections from every quarter. 
 
 Having seen the measure safely through Parliament, Carleton 
 resumed his work as governor in Canada ; but before the changes 
 in judicial organization necessitated by the act could be prop- 
 erly made, he found his energies wholly taken up with the task 
 of repelHng an invasion of the colony by the forces of the revolt- 
 ing seaboard settlements to the south. This threatened danger 
 brought up an important question connected with the obligations 
 imposed upon the seigniors and their dependents by the seign- 
 iorial system. It had always been recognized, during the French 
 period, that the governor might call upon the seigniors of the 
 colony to enrol their habitants for military service in the inter- 
 ests of the crown. No such stipulation, it is true, was ever in- 
 serted in any of the title-deeds of grants within the colony ; ^ 
 but the rights of the crown in this respect seem never to have 
 been questioned. It was now suggested to Carleton that he 
 should issue a proclamation requiring the seigniors of the colony 
 to enrol their dependents into companies, and to hold them at 
 the disposal of those who commanded the small contingents of 
 regular British troops in the colony. As the governor was ex- 
 tremely anxious to increase the defensive strength of the colony 
 to the utmost point, he readily accepted this suggestion, and on 
 June 9, 1775, called upon the seigniors to muster their habitants 
 to repel the invaders. He asked them to have the habitants 
 provide themselves with arms, and to hold themselves in readi- 
 ness to proceed to designated centres of mobilization. 
 
 Most of the seigniors, taking the view that the representative 
 of the crown had a legal right to command their own service 
 and that of their dependents, promptly conveyed the orders of 
 the governor to their habitants ; but they met with very little 
 favorable response, for in many cases the habitants took the 
 ground that, with the cession of the colony, their obligation to 
 do military service had passed out of existence. Some of the 
 seigniors pointed out to them that refusal to serve would entail 
 
 ^ See above, p. 64.
 
 212 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 the forfeiture of their lands, and that as soon as affairs were 
 settled the courts of the province would be called upon to decree 
 this forfeiture ; but the habitants gave little heed to these threats, 
 and a few of the seigniors who attempted to bully their depend- 
 ents into enrolment were very roughly handled. In some in- 
 stances the governor sought to assist the seigniors by sending 
 some regular officers into the seigniories ; but the habitants re- 
 ceived them coldly and in some cases with open insolence. In 
 one instance the women of the seigniory put the officers to iiight 
 with a well-aimed volley of rocks and other missiles.-^ It ap- 
 
 1 For a detailed account of the disorders which attended the attempts of some of 
 the seigniors to enrol their habitants, see an interesting paper entitled " A Narrative 
 of the tumultuous conduct of the freeholders of divers seigniories in the province of 
 Quebec in the summer of the year 1775, in opposition to the endeavours used by 
 their Seigniors to call them out to take arms against the American army, that had in- 
 vaded the province : Shevv^ing their aversion to being commanded by their Seigniors, 
 and the little influence their Seigniors, and the other Noblesse of Canada, have over 
 them." This paper, which was " written by a Gentleman very lately arrived from 
 Quebec," is preserved by Maseres in his Additional Papers concerning the Provifice 
 of Quebec (1776), 71 ff. 
 
 A few extracts from this narrative may be interesting. It begins as follows : " An 
 opinion prevails in the Province of Quebec, (whether just or not I will not pretend 
 to determine,) that the Seigniors owe military service to their Sovereign, by the 
 tenure of their lands ; and that in the acts of Foi et Hommage, or fealty and homage, 
 they promise to perform the same to the Crown, when called upon : And that, by 
 the same act, they also engage for the personal service of all their vassals, and other 
 tenants, who hold their lands from them, either /ar foi et hommage, or par cens et 
 rentes, or (as it is often expressed) en Roture. It is universally believed, that the 
 Seigniors have, by the Customs of Canada, (which are revived by the late Quebec 
 act,) a legal right, to command the personal service of all the holders of land under 
 them, whenever the Sovereign, or his Representative, calls upon them (the seigniors) 
 for that purpose." It then proceeds to recount the experiences of various seigniors. 
 M. La Corne, seignior of Terrebonne, was told by his tenants " that they were now 
 become subjects of England, and did not look on themselves as Frenchmen in any 
 respect whatever," and that consequently he had no right to enforce the obligations 
 imposed by French law. When La Corne attempted to bully them, they mobbed him 
 vigorously and compelled him to hurry back to Montreal ; when he threatened to 
 return with soldiers and force them to their service, they resolved to arm themselves 
 and to resist force with force. M. Deschambaud went over to his seigniory on the 
 Richelieu and summoned his tenants to arms ; they listened patiently to what he 
 had to say, and then peremptorily refused to accede to his demands. At this the 
 seignior was foolish enough to draw his sword; whereupon the habitants gave both 
 him and a few friends who accompanied him a severe thrashing and sent them off 
 vowdng vengeance. Fearing retaliation, the habitants then armed themselves, and to 
 the number of several hundred prepared to attack any regular forces which might
 
 BRITISH administration: 213 
 
 pears that not more than a few hundred French militiamen were 
 enrolled in all the seigniories; and of these many were appar- 
 ently induced to render their service through promises of a liberal 
 bounty. 
 
 The whole episode is interesting, not only because it shows 
 the somewhat changed attitude of the habitant to the seigniorial 
 system under the new government, but also because it seems to 
 have been the last attempt on the part of the British authori- 
 ties to enforce the seigniorial obligation of military service. 
 Although the seigniorial system was still in existence during the 
 war of 18 12-18 1 5, it does not appear that the enrolment of a 
 feudal ban was even suggested to the authorities. The failure 
 to enforce the obligation in 1775 seems to have ended its existence. 
 
 Owing to the disturbances of the year 1 775-1 776, no steps were 
 taken toward carrying out the terms of the Quebec Act till 
 February, 1777, when a new system of civil courts for the 
 administration of the revived French civil law was established. 
 A little later a proclamation was issued requiring all holders of 
 seigniories to render their fealty and homage to the representa- 
 tive of the crown at Quebec.^ This step was deemed advis- 
 able because, as there had been no general rendering of this 
 obligation since the conquest, some of the seigniors were taking 
 advantage of the fact to refuse payment of their dues to the 
 crown. Since, however, the filing of aveiix et dinonibrements 
 had to accompany the performance of fealty and homage, and 
 since the preparation of these files by the seigniors took time, 
 the date fixed for the rendering of the allegiance was in 1778 
 extended to the last day of 1779.^ 
 
 be sent against them. Through the discretion of Governor Carleton, however, who 
 hastened to send one of his officers to disavow the action of the seignior and to 
 promise the habitants that if they returned quietly to their homes they should not be 
 molested, they were persuaded to disperse. Mr. Cuthbert, an English gentleman, 
 seignior of Berthier, tried in vain to secure a hearing from his tenants, who refused 
 to assemble at his manor-house. They held a meeting of their own, however, and 
 took oath among themselves that if any one of their number responded to the call 
 " they would directly burn his house and his barn, and destroy his cattle." These 
 and other examples serve to show that the habitants resisted in no uncertain way 
 the attempts of the authorities to enforce the feudal obligation of military service. 
 
 ^ State Paper Office, Board of Trade, Canada, vol. xx, August 28, 1777. 
 
 2 Ibid. November 30, 1778.
 
 214 BRITISH administration: 
 
 Meanwhile Governor Carleton had left the colony and had 
 been succeeded by Governor Haldimand. During the next dec- 
 ade, little occurred in connection with the history and develop- 
 ment of the seigniorial system that is worth recording. A 
 number of the regular troops sent out to Canada during the 
 American Revolution took up lands in the colony and became 
 permanent settlers there ; but these received their grants in free 
 and common socage. During the latter part of the war, and 
 especially after the conclusion of the peace of 1783, large 
 numbers of loyalists made their way from the seaboard States 
 to Canada. Comparatively few of these, however, took up 
 lands in the settled districts of Quebec, although some came 
 into what are now the " Eastern Townships " ; the great ma- 
 jority went either to the maritime provinces or to the western 
 part of Canada, — to what now forms the province of Ontario. 
 Haldimand was instructed to treat the loyalists generously in 
 the matter of land grants, which in every case seem to have 
 been made in free and common socage. Even among the 
 French population of the colony there was a growing feehng 
 in favor of the English freehold tenure ; petitioners for public 
 lands almost invariably asked that the grants be given in this 
 form. In the course of this research, not a single instance of 
 a grant en seigneiirie from the crown between 1775 and 1792 has 
 come to light, though the colonial authorities possessed an un- 
 doubted right to make such grants. On the other hand, there 
 seems to have been a desire on the part of some seigniors to 
 have their tenures converted into the new form. This feeling 
 first manifested itself officially in a petition to the governor, in 
 1788, from M. Charles de Lanaudiere, a prominent seignior of 
 the colony and a member of the council, who asked "that the 
 tenure of his estates be converted from tenure in fief to tenure 
 in free and common socage." ^ Lanaudiere's petition was 
 promptly referred to a committee of the council, but no action 
 was taken upon it. 
 
 In 1790, however, the governor ordered that a committee of 
 the whole council should hear M. de Lanaudiere on his petition, 
 and that it should, furthermore, " investigate and report a state- 
 1 Minutes of the Council, August 25, 1790, Titles and Documents, i. 25-26.
 
 BRITISH administration: 215 
 
 ment of the comparative advantages of the tenure in free and 
 common socage, and the present tenures of the province of a 
 different description, with a view to the pubUc interest, as well 
 as that of the individuals holding under such tenures " ; that 
 it " deliberate, and in case a conversion of the present tenures 
 in fief or otherwise into socage tenure shall appear to be ad- 
 visable," that it " report upon the most eligible mode of effecting 
 the same, without prejudice to the rights of individuals and the 
 general interest of the country. " The committee was also in- 
 structed to obtain information regarding the seigniorial system 
 from every accessible source, and, if it was deemed advisable, 
 to call upon the law officers of the crown in the colony to assist 
 in the investigation. 
 
 Early in September, 1790, the committee began its inquiry 
 T3y calling upon the surveyor-general for a table showing the 
 number of seigniories granted, the total acreage of the same, 
 and, so far as possible, the conditions on which the grant 
 had been made in each instance. It then proceeded to draw 
 up a series of legal questions, the decisions upon which seemed 
 necessary to a proper understanding of the seigniorial system ; 
 and these queries, eleven in number, it submitted to the attor- 
 ney-general and the solicitor-general for a joint report.^ Through 
 
 ^ The questions (which may be found in Titles and Documents, i. 27 ff.) were as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. " Upon what tenures were the lands of this country granted by ,the French 
 crown ?" 
 
 2. " What kind of tenure was most prevalent, and what may be stated in probable 
 conjecture for the proportion between them ? " 
 
 3. " What securities had the French crown by the law of the country, or the 
 nature and tenor of the grants, to compel or promote the cultivation and improve- 
 ment of the land granted ?" 
 
 4. " What were the legal burdens upon the grantee of the crown in reservations, 
 conditions, rents, and services ; or what were the benefits accruing to the French 
 crown from the nature of the grant, founded in the usual reservations, or by the gen- 
 eral laws of the country ?" 
 
 5. " What were the benefits which the grantee of the crown might draw from the 
 subfeudatory ; or what were the burdens, the acknowledgments, rents and services, 
 to which the occupants under the royal grantee were liable from the nature of the 
 concession or by the law of the country? " 
 
 6. " Was the estate of the grantee of the crown subject to partition by marriage 
 contract, testamentary disposition, or any other mode of alienation, voluntary or
 
 2i6 BRITISH administration: 
 
 serious illness the attorney-general was prevented from assisting 
 in answering the questions ; but early in October the solicitor- 
 general, the Hon. J. Williams, presented the results of his in- 
 vestigation. ^ His answers were for the most part brief, and in 
 general showed that only a cursory inquiry into the matter 
 had been made by him. In one or two cases they were clearly 
 misleading.2 On the whole, however, the report, considering 
 the haste with which it was prepared, gave a good general out- 
 line of the legal bases of the land-tenure system existent during 
 the old regime. 
 
 About the same time the council had requested M. de La- 
 naudiere himself to present answers to the same queries. Ac- 
 cordingly, a week or two after the solicitor-general made his 
 report, Lanaudiere submitted his replies to the first seven of the 
 eleven questions, his answers agreeing in the main with those 
 given by the solicitor-general.^ 
 
 Having in these various ways possessed itself of information 
 on the subject in hand, the council proceeded to adopt a series 
 of resolutions embodying its views. After summarizing the in- 
 judicial, and by inheritance in the lines direct or collateral ; or was any estate held 
 impartible and unalienable, or in the nature of an English entail ? " 
 
 7. " Were the subfeudatory farms of the concessions of the tenantry held under 
 the royal grantees, devisable, descendible, alienable, and partible in the like manner 
 without limitation?" 
 
 8. " Would a conversion of the French tenures into the tenure of free and com- 
 mon socage be advantageous to the proprietor holding by grant of the French crown 
 in fief, seigniory, or roture, discriminating its effects as to the parcels that are settled, 
 or such as are still unconceded and uncultivated ; and what in particular appears to 
 you to be the instances of advantage or disadvantage to result from such conver- 
 sion ? " 
 
 9. " Would such conversion of the tenure of estates or farms of the subfeuda- 
 tories be beneficial or detrimental to them ; and in what respects as you apprehend, 
 and for what reasons ? " 
 
 10. " How may the interests of the crown and public be affected by such conver- 
 sion ; stating the points in which it may operate to the loss or emolument of the 
 royal revenue ? " 
 
 11. "By what mode may such conversion of tenure be accomplished ?" 
 
 1 " Report of the Solicitor-General to the Honorable Members of the Council," 
 October 5, 1790, Titles and Documents^ i. 27-35. 
 
 2 For example, in declaring that the cens et rentes was uniform in amount. Cf. 
 above, p. 92. 
 
 3 Titles and Documents, i. 35-39 (October 17, 1790).
 
 BRITISH administration: 217 
 
 cidents of the seigniorial system under the French rule, it 
 declared its opinion that " the feudal system . . . was among 
 the main causes of that low condition in which Canada was 
 found at the British conquest." Moreover, it affirmed that in 
 all probability the continuance of the system would operate 
 more detrimentally in the future than it had done in the past, 
 since the population of the country now depended "for its 
 increase upon the introduction of British settlers," who were 
 "known to be all averse to any but Enghsh tenures." This 
 being the case, it seemed to the council that the seigniors could 
 hope to increase the number of their censitaires in future only 
 by drawing upon the descendants of present censitaires ; and it 
 expressed grave doubts whether even these would be found will- 
 ing to take grants en censive, when grants in free and common 
 socage were to be had from the crown. Accordingly, the coun- 
 cil resolved that it would be to the interest of all concerned if 
 the tenure of lands held en seigncurie or en roUire could be 
 commuted into the tenure of free and common socage ; but 
 since " an absolute and universal commutation of the ancient 
 tenures, though for a better, would be a measure of doubtful 
 policy," it decided to recommend that legislation be had pro- 
 viding for voluntary but not compulsory commutation. In 
 accordance with this resolution, it submitted to the governor the 
 draft of a bill providing that any seignior might surrender his 
 lands to the crown and receive back the same in free and com- 
 mon socage ; that any one who held lands en censive directly from 
 the crown might do likewise ; and that one who held a grant en 
 censive from a seignior might arrange with the seignior for a 
 conversion of the tenure of his holding.^ 
 
 From these resolutions one of the members of the council, 
 Mr. Mabane, strongly dissented on several grounds. "It ap- 
 pears," he declared vigorously, "that the slow progress of popu- 
 lation and settlement under the government of France cannot 
 be ascribed to any inherent vice in the several tenures under 
 which lands are held in the colony; that it arose from the 
 difficulties which the first settlers found in contending with the 
 fierce and savage nations which surrounded them, from their 
 
 ^ Resolves of the Council, Titles and Documents, i. 39-43.
 
 2l8 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 frequent wars with the British colonies, and above all, from 
 their repeated expeditions in the upper countries and toward 
 the Ohio, in which the ambitious policy of France had forced 
 them to engage." As a proof that the present tenures were 
 "not inimical to population and settlement of the colony," Ma- 
 bane pointed to the fact that the population of the colony 
 had doubled since the conquest. He showed, moreover, — and 
 he was right in so doing, — that the council proposed to allow 
 the seigniors to obtain full property in the ungranted lands of 
 their seigniories, whereas by the provisions of various royal 
 edicts they were merely trustees of these lands and were under 
 obligation to grant them to applicants at the customary rates. 
 The carrying out of the council's recommendations would, 
 Mabane claimed, greatly enhance the value of the seigniories 
 to their holders, and would at the same time deprive the people 
 of the colony of vast areas of lands which the seigniors held in 
 trust for them and for their descendants. " If the conversion 
 of the seigniories into free and common socage should take 
 place," he declared, "the children of the present inhabitants of 
 the country and all others desirous to settle thereon would be 
 left entirely subject to the arbitrary exactions of the seigniors, 
 to their infinite prejudice and the manifest detriment of the 
 country's improvement." In conclusion Mabane asserted that 
 the great mass of the people were satisfied with conditions as 
 they were; "that the services or burdens to which the censi- 
 taires under concessions from seigniors " were subject were 
 " few, clearly understood and ascertained, and ... by no means 
 onerous or oppressive."-^ 
 
 The passing of these resolutions by a majority of the council 
 seems to have had no tangible result whatever. The question 
 was raised whether the power to carry out the recommendations 
 was vested in the colonial authorities, or whether it would have 
 to be sought from the home government; but the feeling in the 
 country on the matter of obtaining commutation of tenures was 
 not strong, and for many years after the recommendations of the 
 
 1 " Mr. Mabane's Reasons of Dissent from the Resolutions and Motion of the 
 Chief Justice adopted by the Committee [of the Whole Council]," Titles and Docu- 
 ments, i. 43-44.
 
 BRITISH administration: 
 
 219 
 
 council were made the whole subject seems to have been left in 
 abeyance. Other important questions, such, for example, as 
 the obtaining and inaugurating of a system of representative 
 government, engaged the minds and attention of the legis- 
 lators. 
 
 Meanwhile, although the colonial authorities in Lower Canada 
 stood ready to grant lands en seigneiirie whenever application 
 for such a cession was made, there seems to have been no 
 grants under this form of tenure.^ From time to time peti- 
 tions were received from seigniors asking for the commutation 
 of the tenures under which they held their lands, but in no case 
 were the authorities bestirred to any action other than the mere 
 acknowledgment of the petitions. 
 
 During these years the land laws of the province were 
 administered, so far as possible, as they were during the 
 French period ; but although the judges sought to discover and 
 enforce the legal rights of seigniors and censitaires respectively, 
 they encountered many difficulties in their application of the 
 law. During the old regime, for example, the intendant had 
 been endowed with wide discretionary powers, extending, as 
 has been shown, even to the setting aside of seigniorial claims 
 which, however well-founded at law, seemed to him unreason- 
 able in exaction.2 He had administrative as well as judicial 
 powers : he could not only order a seignior to concede por- 
 tions of his ungranted lands to a settler, but in the event of 
 the seignior's refusal he and the governor might make the 
 grant and convey a valid title by their own authority.^ Now, 
 by the Judicature Act of 1793, the court of King's Bench 
 in Lower Canada was invested with "full power and jurisdic- 
 tion to hear and determine all plaints, suits, and demands of 
 what nature soever which might have been heard and deter- 
 mined in the courts of the Prevote, Justice Royale, Intendant, 
 or Superior Council under the government of the province, 
 prior to the year 1759, touching rights, remedies, and actions 
 of a civil nature."* From the wording of the statute it would 
 appear that the administrative as well as the judicial au- 
 
 ^ See Dunkin, Address at the Bar, etc., Appendix. 
 
 2 See above, p. 205. ^ Above, p. 89. * 34 George III, c. 6.
 
 220 BRITISH administration: 
 
 thority of the intendant had been inherited by the new court. 
 In several important cases the court held that the provi- 
 sions of the arrets of 171 1 and 1732 were still in force in 
 the colony, and, in consequence, that a seignior was under 
 obligation to make grants of land at the rates customary in 
 the neighborhood ; ^ but in no case did it assume to follow 
 up this opinion by making such a grant when the seignior 
 refused to do so.^ In other words, in declining to apply 
 the old remedy, it deprived of its former effectiveness the 
 important rule of law in regard to compulsory subinfeuda- 
 tion. 
 
 In a number of other matters, also, the protection of the 
 habitants against their seigniors was far less effective than 
 it had been under the old dispensation. The old court of the 
 intendant exacted no fees whatever for services ; its interven- 
 tion could be had by the poorest habitant. Under the new judi- 
 cial organization, litigation was very much more expensive ; 
 and, although the habitant might in theory still claim the 
 protection of the courts against illegal seigniorial exactions, 
 he was in most cases debarred from doing so by his com- 
 parative poverty. This point is very plainly made in a re- 
 port which the attorney-general submitted to the governor 
 in 1794. In that year some of the habitants of the seign- 
 iory of Longueuil petitioned the governor for relief against 
 " an arbitrary increase of rents " claimed from them by their 
 seigniors " in open defiance of the ancient ordinances of the 
 kings of France. " The governor referred the matter to the 
 attorney-general, who reported that, while the right of the 
 habitants to refuse payment of the increased rentals and dues 
 was perfectly clear, nevertheless the expense to which 
 they had to go in order to make this right effective put them 
 almost entirely at the mercy of their seigniors.^ The situation 
 
 1 See, for example, Langlois vs. Mart el, 2 Lower Canada Reports, 51. 
 
 2 Meredith, Observations, 1 13. 
 
 3 "They [the habitants] are able to institute and carry on their suits to judgment 
 in the common pleas ; equal perhaps to meet the costs of the court of appeals ; but 
 the enormous expense attending an appeal to His Majesty in council, to which the 
 seignior is entitled, as his rights in future may be bound by the decision, deprives 
 them of the possibihty of obtaining justice, and compels them to abandon their rights,
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 221 
 
 was one which in practice operated very much to the advan- 
 tage of the seigniors, and the result was apparent in the very- 
 considerable rise in the rate of dues exacted in many of the 
 seigniories. 
 
 Since 1791 the question had become a matter of concern to 
 Lower Canada only ; for by the Constitutional Act of that year 
 the colony had been divided into two provinces, and in Upper 
 Canada provision had been made for the establishment of 
 both the civil and the criminal law of England.^ In the 
 upper province, lands were to be granted in free and com- 
 mon socage only ; in Lower Canada they were to be given 
 under this form of tenure whenever the applicant so desired, 
 but the right of the royal representatives to grant lands eji seign- 
 eurie in other cases was in no wise abridged.^ 
 
 During the fifteen years following the passing of the Consti- 
 tutional Act, no definite steps appear to have been taken by the 
 authorities in the direction of commuting the tenure of lands 
 held under the old system. It seems to have been the feehng 
 that legislation would have to be sought from the British ParUa- 
 ment before the matter could be properly dealt with ; but this 
 point was not regarded as settled. Consequently, toward the 
 close of 1 8 16, when the affairs of the province so long disturbed 
 by war had become settled, the home authorities were asked for 
 their opinion as to whether the colonial government could, of its 
 own powers, accept the surrender of lands held en seigneiirie 
 for the purpose of regranting them in free and common socage. 
 
 On receiving this request. Earl Bathurst, who was then in 
 charge of the colonial office, desired the opinion of the law 
 officers of the crown on the matter. This opinion he promptly 
 received, and forthwith transmitted a copy to Quebec. The 
 crown officers, after reviewing the various enactments relating 
 to the tenure of lands in the colony, expressed the opinion that 
 there did " not seem to be any objection to His Majesty's ac- 
 
 and throw themselves upon the mercy of their antagonist, who compromises the action, 
 and grants a new deed of concession upon his own terms" (Report of the Attorney- 
 General, February 27, 1794, Titles and Documents, i. 93-95). 
 
 1 31 George III, c. 31. This act may be conveniently found in Houston's Con- 
 stitutional Documents, II2-133. 
 
 2 Ibid. § xliii.
 
 222 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 cepting a surrender of lands holden cii seigneurie and regranting 
 them in free and common socage," and hence that no special 
 legislation on the point by either the home or the provincial 
 parliament would be necessary. They bcHeved, however, that, 
 if commutation were to be made compulsory, appropriate leg- 
 islation to this end must be obtained.^ 
 
 The colonial authorities expressed their satisfaction with this 
 opinion, but at once raised another question of a somewhat 
 different nature. It seems that in 1794 Lord Dorchester had 
 assured the colonial legislature that the proceeds of the droit de 
 qjiint, which accrued to the crown from the seigniories, should 
 be used toward defraying the civil expenses of the colony. The 
 question which now presented itself was whether, in the event 
 of permitting the seigniors voluntarily to obtain commutation, 
 this right would not be lost, and whether, therefore, the crown 
 would not, by the use of its prerogative, have broken its pledge 
 to the legislature. Since the permitting of voluntary commuta- 
 tion would reduce the revenues of the colony, ought not the 
 consent of the colonial legislature to the proposed action to be 
 asked ? ^ To this question the home government, which was 
 again consulted, returned answer " that to take from them [the 
 legislature] this source of revenue without their assent, or with- 
 out an equivalent, would be an infringement of what they might 
 fairly consider a pledge or assurance on the part of the crown." 
 Consequently the colonial authorities were advised that it would 
 not be expedient, without securing legislation from the provincial 
 parliament, to make any attempt in the direction of changing 
 the tenure of lands.^ 
 
 One other question, though not so important, is of interest as 
 showing the difficulties in the way of effecting a commutation of 
 
 ^ Bathurst to Sherbrooke, February 6, 1817, Correspondence between the Colonial 
 Office and the Governors of Canada relative to the Seigniorial and Feudal Tenure 
 (1853), 18-20. The opinion which accompanies Bathurst's despatch is dated Jan- 
 uary 22, 181 7, and is signed by the Hon. W. Caron, attorney-general, and the Hon. J. 
 Shepherd, solicitor-general. 
 
 2 Sherbrooke to Bathurst, May 20, 181 7, Ibid. 21, 
 
 3 Bathurst to Sherbrooke, August 31, 181 7, Ibid. 21-23. This despatch is accom- 
 panied by an opinion on the question, dated August I, 1817, addressed to Earl 
 Bathurst and signed by "Messrs. S. Shepherd and R, Gifford, His Majesty's law- 
 officers."
 
 BRITISH ADMINISTRATION. 223 
 
 tenure even when both the seignior and the authorities were in 
 favor of it. By the provisions of the Constitutional Act of 1791, 
 one-seventh of the ungranted lands of the colony were to be re- 
 served for the support of a Protestant clergy.^ The point was 
 now made that, if a seignior surrendered his lands to the crown, 
 he could receive back only six-sevenths of them in free and 
 common socage ; for, by the very fact of surrender, he would put 
 his property in the category of "ungranted lands," of which 
 one-seventh must be reserved by the crown.^ 
 
 In view of the difficulties in dealing with the matter, it was 
 thought best by the governor and council to ask the British 
 Parliament to pass an act affording facilities for voluntary 
 commutation, by making provision for replacing the quints 
 which would be lost to the colonial treasury thereby, and for 
 obviating the necessity of holding " clergy reserves " out of any 
 part of the regranted lands. This request was acceded to by 
 the British authorities, and in 1822 provisions along the lines 
 desired were incorporated in a bill dealing with Canadian affairs. 
 The bill was passed without difficulty, and went on the statute 
 books as " An Act to regulate the Trade of the Province of 
 Lower and Upper Canada, and for other purposes relating to 
 the said Provinces." ^ This enactment, which is commonly 
 known as the Canada Trade Act, contained two important 
 sections embodying the first legislative step toward the abo- 
 lition of the feudal system in Canada.* 
 
 1 31 George III, c. 31, § xxxvi. 2 cf_ below, p. 224. 
 
 2 3 George IV, c. 119. The sections of this act relating to the commutation of 
 land tenure are printed in Edicts, Ordinances, Declarations, and Decrees relative to 
 the Seigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1852), 290-291. 
 
 * Sections xxxi-xxxii.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 It was the design of the Canada Trade Act of 1822 to make 
 possible the voluntary commutation of the tenure of lands held 
 en seigneurie. After reciting the fact that doubts had arisen 
 whether the tenure of lands held " in fief and seigniory " could 
 legally be changed, the act provided : " If any person or per- 
 sons holding any lands in the said province ... of Lower Can- 
 ada ... in fief and seigniory, and having legal power and 
 authority to alienate the same, shall at any time from and after 
 the commencement of this act, surrender the same into the 
 hands of His Majesty . . . and shall by petition . . . set forth 
 that he ... is desirous of holding the same in free and com- 
 mon socage, [the governor of the said province] . . . shall 
 cause a fresh grant to be made to such person or persons of 
 such lands to be holden in free and common socage, . . . sub- 
 ject nevertheless to payment ... of such sum or sums of 
 money as and for a commutation for the . . . dues which 
 would have been payable to His Majesty under the original 
 tenures." It further provided that no " clergy reserves " should 
 be retained out of the lands whose tenure was commuted in this 
 way, and made provision for a like commutation of tenure in 
 the case of lands held en censive in the seigniories owned by 
 the crown. ^ 
 
 The provisions of this act effected very little. It offered 
 facilities for the commutation of the tenure of seigniories, and 
 of that comparatively small category of en censive holdings 
 comprised within seigniories belonging to the crown ; but it 
 made no provision for the commutation of the tenure of lands 
 held en censive within the other seigniories, although the per- 
 
 1 3 George IV, c. 119, §§ xxxi-xxxii. 
 
 224
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 225 
 
 sons who desired a change of tenure were the habitants rather 
 than the seigniors. 
 
 Three years later an attempt was made to remedy this defect 
 in the act. In 1825 the British Parliament passed the Canada 
 Trade and Tenures AcX.} designed partly to readjust the trade 
 relations of the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, 
 and partly to supplement the previous land-tenure legislation 
 of the latter province. The act of 1825 reenacted the provi- 
 sions of the act of 1822, and went on to provide that, when a 
 seignior obtained a commutation of the tenure of his seigniory, 
 he should be bound to afford his habitants an opportunity to 
 secure a like commutation of their holdings. It also made pro- 
 vision that any seignior who had effected a commutation of his 
 dues with"" the crown should be bound, " when thereunto re- 
 quired " by any of his censitaires or by any persons who held 
 a litre de fief, en arrih'efief, or a titre de cens, to consent to 
 grant to such censitaires " a commutation, release, and extin- 
 guishment of and from the droit de qiiint ... or droit de lods 
 et ventes,'' as the case might be, and from " all other feudal 
 and seigniorial rights and burdens " to which such censitaires 
 and their lands might be "subject or liable, to such seignior 
 . . . for a just and reasonable price • . . , which price," con- 
 tinues the act, " in case the parties concerned therein shall 
 differ respecting the same, shall be ascertained and fixed by 
 experts, to be in that behalf nominated and appointed accord- 
 ing to the due course of law in the said province." ^ Instruc- 
 tions were sent to the governor-general that the commutation 
 of the tenure of seigniories should be effected on a basis of five 
 per cent of the value of the seigniory, a rate purposely made 
 low "as an inducement to the seigniors to carry into effect a 
 change of tenure from which considerable public advantage" 
 might be anticipated.^ 
 
 1 " An Act to provide for the Extinction of Feudal and Seigniorial Rights and 
 Burdens on Lands held a Hire de fief z.v\A a titre de cens, in the Province of Lower 
 Canada ; and for the gradual Conversion of those Tenures into the Tenure of 
 Free and Common Socage; and for other purposes relating to the said Province" 
 (6 George IV, c. 59). 
 
 ^ Section iii. 
 
 8 Bathurst to Dalhousie, August 31, 1825, Correspondence between the Colonial
 
 226 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 On the receipt of these instructions, the governor-general 
 issued a proclamation stating the main provisions of the Trade 
 and Tenures Act, and asserting that seigniors might take ad- 
 vantage of these provisions on very hberal terms.^ Apparently, 
 however, the proclamation met with little response; for on 
 June 19 of the same year (1826) the governor reported to the 
 British authorities that, while there were before him some few 
 applications for the commutation of the tenure " of houses and 
 lots in Quebec city," it would " probably be a considerable 
 time " before the proprietors of seigniories would " come for- 
 ward to avail themselves of the benefits of the measure." They 
 were, he went on to declare, afraid to ask to have their tenures 
 altered lest the habitants should also take advantage of the pro- 
 visions of the act and demand a commutation of their dues to 
 the seigniors on the same low basis. The seigniors, he said, 
 were not at all averse to commuting their own dues to the 
 crown on a five per cent basis, but they were not willing to give 
 their habitants any such favorable terms ; still, if the crown 
 treated them generously in the interest of the " public advan- 
 tage," they could scarcely hope to avoid giving somewhat 
 generous terms to their habitants in turn. Furthermore, in 
 arranging a commutation with the crown, the seignior would 
 be obliged to have his seigniory valued, and it would of course 
 be to his interest to have it appraised at as low a figure as pos- 
 sible ; when it came to commuting the dues of lands held by his 
 habitants, however, it would be to his interest to claim for his 
 seigniory as high a value as possible. This conflict of interests, 
 concluded the governor, served to deter the seigniors from 
 seeking the benefits afforded by the act.^ 
 
 Another flaw in the Trade and Tenures Act lay in the fact 
 that the five per cent commutation rule was to be applied to all 
 seigniorial lands, whether rural or urban. Considerable portions 
 of some of the seigniories were now comprised within the 
 municipalities of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers ; and 
 
 Office and the Governors of Canada relative to the Seigniorial and Feudal Tenure 
 (1853), 24-25. 
 
 1 Quebec Official Gazette, April 20, 1826, p. 380. 
 
 2 Dalhousie to Bathurst, June 19, 1826, Correspondence between the Colonial Office 
 and the Govertiors of Canada, etc., 25-26.
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 227 
 
 as these lands naturally changed hands more often than rural 
 holdings, the mutation fines payable to the crown accrued more 
 frequently. To place these lands on the same basis as rural prop- 
 erty was obviously unfair to the holders of the latter ; accord- 
 ingly, Governor Dalhousie promptly pointed out to the home 
 authorities that a distinction should be made between the two 
 classes of lands. ^ In response, instructions were given that a 
 double rate — ten per cent on the gross value of the lots — 
 should be exacted in commuting the dues of lands lying within 
 the limits of municipalities.^ 
 
 In the same year Dalhousie received further orders that, 
 since the act of 1825 "contemplated the entire extinction of 
 the feudal tenure in Lower Canada," all future grants within 
 the limits of seigniories owned by the crown were to be made in 
 free and common socage and not en censive. He was asked, 
 however, to make such reservations of timber, minerals, etc., as 
 had usually been made in the old grants.^ While the wording 
 of these instructions did not preclude the colonial authorities 
 from making en censive grants out of the waste lands of the 
 province not comprised within the crown seigniories, the spirit 
 of them, especially as shown by the statement that the colonial 
 office wished to see the complete extinction of feudal tenures in 
 Lower Canada, seemed to dictate that waste lands should be 
 given out only in free and common socage. A few years later 
 (1830) the governor-general, Lord Aylmer, asked for definite 
 instructions on this point. 
 
 In his communication he laid stress on the fact that the policy 
 of refusing to grant waste lands en seigncjirie or en censive 
 would be unfair to the great mass of the population. " I 
 would here take leave to remark," he wrote, "that the great 
 majority of the inhabitants of Lower Canada hold their lands 
 under the seigniorial tenure, to which they are much attached ; 
 and that, in denying them the power of acquiring crown lands 
 under that tenure, they are virtually excluded from the market 
 when crown lands are put up for sale. Nothing can more fully 
 
 ^ Dalhousie to Bathurst, June 19, 1826, Correspondence, etc., 27. 
 2 Bathurst to Dalhousie, August 31, 1826, Ibid. 
 8 October 30, 1826, Ibid. 28.
 
 228 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 establish the fact of the predilection to which I allude than 
 the extremely rare occurrence of instances of French Cana- 
 dians applying for a commutation of tenure from the seigniorial 
 to the tenure of free and common socage. Upon the whole 
 question I have been given to understand that the granting of 
 the power to acquire crown lands on the seigniorial tenure would 
 be considered a very gracious proceeding towards the Canadians 
 of French extraction." Lord Aylmer therefore asked that, if 
 possible, instructions might be given him making clear his 
 authority, despite the prior orders of 1826, to give purchasers 
 of waste crown lands the option of receiving their titles under 
 either the old or the new form of tenure.^ 
 
 To this request the authorities of the colonial office made 
 reply that, since the intention of the Trade and Tenures Act 
 of 1825 was clearly to provide for the gradual extinction of 
 the old system, they could not properly instruct His Majesty's 
 representative in Canada to take any course which would 
 assist in the perpetuation and extension of it. Since ParUa- 
 ment had passed the act of 1825, Parliament alone, they said, 
 could give the authority which Lord Aylmer desired, either by 
 repealing the act in question or by passing an amending act. 
 In the same communication the authorities expressed a desire 
 that a further attempt should be made to reconcile the people to 
 the new tenure. " If the mind of the people," wrote Lord 
 Goderich, " can be reconciled to the change, a very considerable 
 object will be gained, because the lands of the province will 
 thus be delivered from the absurd and injurious incidents of the 
 feudal tenure." 2 
 
 Matters, therefore, remained as they were. Meantime peti- 
 tions addressed to Parliament began to come to the governor- 
 general from various quarters, praying that those provisions of 
 the Trade and Tenures Act which related to the commutation 
 of the tenure of lands might be repealed. The most important 
 of these petitions was one from the House of Assembly of 
 the province, based upon certain resolutions passed by that 
 
 1 Aylmer to Murray, December 19, 1830, Correspondence, etc., 28-29. 
 
 2 Goderich to Aylmer, March 13, 1831, Ibid. 29-30.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 229 
 
 "body in the latter part of March, 183 1. After a full discussion 
 of the matter in committee of the whole, the assembly had 
 unanimously adopted the following resolutions : — 
 
 "That the introduction of English law into certain parts of 
 this province by the act 6 George IV, c. 59, has introduced the 
 greatest confusion into all parts of the province by destroying 
 acknowledged rights and by affording facilities for fraud and 
 oppression. 
 
 " That the law of England as introduced in certain parts of 
 this province ... is opposed to the feelings of the inhabit- 
 ants, incompatible with their education and habits of life, 
 and has been forced upon them contrary to their rights, in- 
 terests, and desires. 
 
 " That the said law ought to be repealed." ^ 
 
 These resolutions, embodied in a petition, the governor-gen- 
 eral sent to the home authorities in the course of the following 
 month. In transmitting them he drew attention to the fact that 
 the upper and lower houses of the colonial legislature enter- 
 tained very different views regarding the act in question, and 
 suggested that the appointment of a commission from England 
 to study matters on the spot might be found advisable.^ Before 
 this communication reached England, however. Parliament had 
 passed an act amending the statute of 1825 in its objectionable 
 provisions. This new enactment, entitled " An Act to explain 
 and amend the Laws relating to Lands holden in Free and 
 Common Socage in the Province of Lower Canada, and for 
 other purposes therein mentioned, " gave the provincial legisla- 
 ture permission to make such laws in relation to the mode of 
 descent, alienation, and tenure of socage lands as might seem 
 desirable.^ It was hoped, apparently, that, if the incidents of 
 socage tenure were somewhat altered, the people would be 
 reconciled to the general change in tenure. 
 
 When the provincial legislature again met in December, 
 183 1, the lower house proceeded to action as if the imperial 
 
 1 Lower Canada, Assembly Journals, March 24, 1831. 
 
 2 Aylmer to Goderich, April 7, 1831, Correspondence, etc., 30. 
 
 8 1&2 William IV, c. 20. This act was passed on March 30, 1831, and was 
 officially promulgated in the Quebec Gazette of September 22 following.
 
 230 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 act of the preceding March had given the colonial authorities 
 a virtual right to repeal obnoxious provisions in the act of 1825. 
 It introduced a series of resolutions setting forth the claim 
 that the Trade and Tenures Act was in violation of the guar- 
 antees given in the Articles of Capitulation of 1760, the Treaty 
 of Paris of 1763, the Quebec Act of 1774, and the Constitu- 
 tional Act of 1 79 1, in all of which the inhabitants had been 
 assured of " a right to grants of sufficient portions of wild lands 
 held from the crown a titre de fief, subject to the customary 
 dues, and on conditions of cultivation and residence." The 
 effect of the act of 1825, asserted the assembly, had been to 
 deprive the people of this right by " vesting the said lands in 
 the seignior, to dispose of them on such terms and conditions " 
 as he might think fit, and at the same time by subjecting 
 those who might settle thereon to laws with which the great 
 majority of the people of the province were unacquainted, and 
 which were " utterly unsuitable to their circumstances, and 
 repugnant to their feeling and usages." The provisions of the 
 law of 1825 were, it concluded, "contrary to the established 
 rights of the inhabitants of the province, to the extension of 
 settlement, and to the general prosperity." ^ 
 
 These resolutions were adopted with little or no dissent, and 
 a bill was forthwith introduced providing for the repeal of those 
 clauses in the act of 1825 which had " provided for the commu- 
 tation of lands heldi titj'e de fief sxid a titre de cens to be held in 
 free and common socage subject to the laws of England." 
 During the month of January, 1832, this bill had its three read- 
 ings in the lower house, and on February i was sent to the 
 upper house or Legislative Council.^ This body, however, 
 promptly refused concurrence, ostensibly on the ground that it 
 was not within the power of the provincial legislature to repeal 
 the provisions of the imperial act in question, but only to vary 
 the incidents of the tenure which the act sought to establish.^ 
 
 1 Lower Canada, Assembly Journals, January 28, 1832. 
 
 - The legislature of Lower Canada was at this time composed of two houses, — 
 an upper house, or Legislative Council, the members of which were nominated by 
 the crown, and a lower house, or Legislative Assembly, the members of which were 
 elected by the people. 
 
 3 Lower Canada, Council Journals, February 12, 1832.
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 23 1 
 
 Baffled in this direction, the assembly turned to the governor- 
 general with " an humble address " praying that, until such time 
 as the repeal of the provisions in question could be secfUred, 
 commutation of the tenure of seigniories should be granted only 
 vi^ith a reservation protecting the inhabitants in their " ancient 
 right to demand from the seigniors concessions of land at the 
 accustomed rates and dues." The address asked further that 
 the same reservation be made in all socage grants given out of 
 the waste crown lands of the province.^ The governor expressed 
 his regret that the shortness of the time intervening before the 
 end of the session prevented his bestowing upon the subject the 
 attention necessary to a decision, but promised to give it " care- 
 ful consideration before the next session." ^ When the assem- 
 bly reconvened, however, its request was firmly negatived by the 
 chief executive, who informed the members rather curtly that, 
 in every instance in which he might be called upon to give effect 
 to the Canada Tenures Act, he would not fail " to require the 
 complete fulfilment of the law."^ The law, it may be said, re- 
 quired the commutation into socage tenure to be made without 
 any reservation whatsoever. 
 
 Here the whole matter rested during the three ensuing years, 
 the assembly contenting itself, meantime, with requesting returns 
 showing the number of applications for commutation whether 
 by seigniors, holders of sub-fiefs, or habitants, and giving a list 
 of all " oppositions, remonstrances, or memorials which may have 
 been presented." * These returns, which were duly forthcoming 
 in the spring of 1833,^ disclose the fact that very few serious 
 applications for the commutation of the tenure of seigniories 
 under the provisions of the act of 1825 had been received, and 
 that down to the date on which the returns were presented a 
 commutation of tenure had been effected in two cases only.^ 
 
 In the early part of 1834, however, the assembly adopted the 
 
 1 Lower Canada, Assembly Journals, February 16, 1832. 
 
 2 Ilnd. February 25, 1S32. ^ Ibid. December 7, 1832. 
 * Ibid. November 24, 1832. 
 
 ^ Ibid. March 22, 1833. 
 
 ^ These were the seigniories of Ste. Anne de la Perade and Beauharnois, the tenures 
 of which were commuted on December 28, 1830, and March 10, 1833, respectively. 
 See Ibid. 1 832-1 833, Appendix.
 
 232 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 famous Papineau Resolutions, ninety-two in number, which 
 made a violent remonstrance against the policy of the executive 
 authorities in general.^ Seven of these resolutions were devoted 
 to a condemnation of the existing policy in relation to land ten- 
 ure.^ In one of them the assembly laid down its future course 
 of action by declaring : " It is the duty of this house to persist 
 in asking for the repeal of the Canada Tenures Act, and until 
 such repeal shall have been effected, to propose to the other 
 branch of the provincial parliament such measures as may be 
 adapted to weaken the pernicious effects of the said act."^ No 
 action appears to have been taken along this line during the 
 session of 1835 ; but in the following year the assembly re- 
 adopted its resolutions of four years previously,* and passed a bill 
 similar to that which had been thrown out by the Legislative 
 Council in 1832.^ 
 
 There was no expectation on the part of members of the as- 
 sembly that the council would pass this bill, nor did it do so. 
 The governor-general, however, was very anxious that some 
 compromise should be effected, and to this end had his law 
 officers make a report to him on such a possibility. This report 
 emphasized the crux of the whole difficulty very well indeed. 
 "There is," it ran, "every reason to hope that, whenever a 
 better understanding may be established between the assembly 
 and the council, there will be no objection on the part of the 
 former to pass some measure for the gradual discharge of lands 
 from feudal duties and services, if not in a manner obligator}'- 
 on the seigniors, at least by voluntary agreement ; and whenever 
 such measure may be passed, we have no hesitation in declaring 
 that, in our opinion, the Tenures Act of 1825 should be repealed, 
 of course making it a condition of the repeal that all titles and 
 advantages acquired under either of the acts are to be held 
 valid." s 
 
 This report was undoubtedly right in declaring that the main 
 difficulty in the way of a proper settlement of the whole ques- 
 
 1 These resolutions are printed in Kingsford, History of Canada, ix. 544-554. 
 
 2 Resolutions 56-62. ^ Resolution 62. 
 
 * January 28, 1832. See above, p. 229. * Assembly Journals, March i, 1836. 
 
 ^ Report of the Commissioners, 1836, ch. ii. § xx.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 233 
 
 tion of tenures lay in the antagonism between the two houses 
 of the legislature, or rather, perhaps, in the antagonism of the 
 lower house to both the upper house and the governor. It is 
 not necessary here to detail the course of events that placed 
 these different organs of government in a state of hostility which 
 clogged the wheels of administration in such a way that it took 
 an armed conflict to set them free. There were, of course, 
 causes of difference even more important than the question of 
 land-tenure laws. The root of the whole difficulty lay in the 
 desire of the assembly to control the executive and to have the 
 membership of the council made elective and not appointive. 
 Deeper still, however, the conflict was between the French- 
 speaking majority of the provincial population, which absolutely 
 controlled the assembly, and the English-speaking minority, 
 which just as absolutely controlled the governor, the governor's 
 council, and the Legislative Council, or upper house of the 
 legislature.^ It was, as Lord Durham afterwards remarked, a 
 case of " two nations warring in the bosom of a single state," a 
 conflict not of principles but of races.^ 
 
 Since the British conquest many of the seigniories had passed 
 from French into English hands. English settlers with means 
 came to the colony and bought out seigniories, and English 
 merchants of Quebec and Montreal frequently did the same. The 
 new seigniors were often hard masters, enforcing the seigniorial 
 dues and services to the letter, and calling freely — and usually 
 with success — upon the courts for assistance in this direction. 
 They looked upon their seigniories as means of profit, whereas 
 the seigniors of the old regime had been forced to regard them- 
 selves merely as royal agents for the upbuilding of the colony, 
 as trustees of lands held for the use of future settlers and for 
 the sons of the people. The habitant therefore disliked his new 
 master, and desired that he should have no such favor before 
 the law as the right to obtain, for a small sum, absolute property 
 in the seigniory. 
 
 ^ For a discussion of the course of events during this decade of political conflict, 
 see Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. viii ; Christie, History of Lower Canada, vols, 
 iii-iv ; Bradshaw, Self-Government in Canada, chs. ii-iv. 
 
 "^ See below, p. 237.
 
 234 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The church, too, disliked the incoming of the English seign- 
 iors ; for most of them were Protestants, and hence not only paid 
 no tithes themselves, but were ready to subgrant lands to Prot- 
 estant settlers, who also would pay none. By this freedom 
 from the tithe and from the necessity of observing the holy 
 days of the church, the Protestant settler had a great economic 
 advantage in the country ; and by working his land more intelli- 
 gently than his Catholic and French neighbor he became so much 
 more prosperous that the habitant was jealous of him and fre- 
 quently tried to drive him away by petty persecution and boy- 
 cott. The new English settler, moreover, turned his attention 
 to the growing of new products, notably hemp, and in this 
 policy the authorities encouraged him ; but as hemp paid no 
 tithe the church promptly frowned upon its cultivation by the 
 habitant, despite the fact that it could be made to yield a good 
 profit. 
 
 Another class of men who opposed any interference with the 
 old order of things were the notaries. Under the seigniorial 
 system there had been no regular registration of deeds and 
 titles ; every transaction relating to land had to be made before 
 a notary, who recorded the sale or mortgage, as the case might 
 be, and gave copies of the record to the parties concerned. 
 Since this system brought the notaries both prestige and profit, 
 it was only natural that the new policy, which greatly simplified 
 the making of transactions relating to real property, should be 
 opposed by this class of men ; and, as the notaries were numer- 
 ous and influential, their opposition of course carried great 
 weight with the people, especially since they insisted that the 
 new law was all in the seignior's favor. One or two instances 
 of their antagonism are conspicuous. It happened, for example, 
 that in the same year in which the Canada Tenures Act was 
 passed (1825) a charter had been given to the British American 
 Land Company, an organization of English capitalists formed 
 for the purpose of taking up large blocks of waste crown lands 
 and settling them with immigrants from England.^ Taking ad- 
 vantage of the coincidence of date, the notaries throughout the 
 province hastened to suggest that both act and charter were 
 
 1 British Parliamentary Papers, Papers relating to Lands in Canada (1837).
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 235 
 
 parts of a joint scheme for the entire anglicizing of Lower 
 Canada. Again they took up as a substantial grievance the 
 commutation of tenures, although in reality the policy had 
 been pursued to very slight extent ; and by flaunting it as an 
 issue before the people many of them obtained seats in the 
 assembly.^ t 
 
 Finally, the habitants were as a class showing signs of rest- 
 lessness and discontent during the earlier thirties. Under the 
 influence of the French law of succession, their domains had 
 been divided and subdivided until a holding, in the peculiar 
 shape which it retained, would scarcely have sufficed to support 
 a family even had the habitant adopted up-to-date methods of 
 cultivation. This he did not do : his methods were for the 
 most part those of his great-grandfather of the old French 
 epoch. Fertilization of the land was rare; systematic rotation 
 of crops would have been most difficult on the narrow strip 
 of land which he held ; and implements showed little or 
 no improvement. If anything, the habitant was at this time 
 worse off than he had been before the conquest ; for, while his 
 average holding was much smaller, neither his seignior nor his 
 church had in the least relaxed its demands upon him. The 
 maintenance of his numerous progeny — for large families were 
 still the rule — was to him an uphill task, and the loyal attempt 
 at its accomplishment too often made him a spiritless drudge. 
 No wonder, then, that he became an easy prey to the plausible 
 sophistry of his leaders, who exploited him to their own political 
 advantage. 
 
 The antagonism of the two arms of government representing 
 the two races in the province came to a climax in 1836, when 
 the assembly definitely refused to grant the funds necessary 
 for the carrying on of the administration. A commission of 
 three, sent over from England under the chairmanship of the 
 Earl of Gosford, investigated the situation, and, according to 
 its report, found the assembly wholly in the wrong. Acting 
 upon this report, the British Parliament, in the spring of 1837, 
 passed a series of resolutions introduced by Lord John Russell, 
 declaring that it was advisable to curtail the powers of the 
 
 ^ Cf. Bradshaw, Self-Governmetit in Canada, 62-63.
 
 236 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 assembly by providing ways and means of financing the provin- 
 cial administration without the necessity of its assent. With 
 this threat held before it, the assembly was reconvened in the 
 hope that its members would show a more compromising spirit ; 
 but by an overwhelming majority it declined to recede a single 
 jot from its former stand. It was accordingly dissolved without 
 further ado, and the last parliament of Lower Canada passed 
 into history. 
 
 Before the British Parliament could adopt any measure based 
 upon the Russell resolutions, constitutional opposition on the 
 part of the assembly had given place to armed opposition on the 
 part of the followers of the assembly in the province. Passive 
 resistance had given way to active, and the rebellion of 1837-38 
 engaged the attention of the executive authorities both in the 
 colony and in the mother country. ^ 
 
 For a time the revolt looked ominous enough, but being 
 poorly organized and miserably managed by those who had it in 
 charge, it was suppressed by the authorities without great 
 difficulty. Some of the leaders fled to the United States on the 
 first reverse, leaving the hapless habitants to shift for themselves 
 as best they might. The rising was not, however, without far- 
 reaching results ; for it drew the attention of the British authori- 
 ties to the gravity of the Canadian situation, and caused them 
 to seek fuller information before legislating further for Lower 
 Canada. To this end they decided, in 1838, to send out to the 
 colony a high commissioner with dictatorial powers, who was to 
 assert the supremacy of the law, to hear complaints from all 
 parties, and to recommend to the home authorities some plan 
 of government for the province under which internal conflicts 
 might be avoided. 
 
 For this most difficult and dangerous task the British govern- 
 ment chose John George Lambton, first earl of Durham, a man 
 whose genius, experience, and disposition seemed eminently 
 to qualify him for the work in hand. Durham arrived in the 
 
 1 For the course of events during the year 1837-38, see Christie, History of Lo7ver 
 Canada, vol. iv ; Kingsford, History of Canada, vol. ix ; Dent, The Upper Canadian 
 Rebellion; Lindsey, William Lyon Mackenzie ; Richardson, Eight Years in^ 
 Canada; Theller, Canada in i8jy—j8j8; Read, Rebellion of iS^j.
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 237 
 
 colony during the early summer of 1838, and having taken what 
 he deemed to be necessary measures for the strengthening of 
 his own authority in the province, proceeded to make an ex- 
 haustive study of the various grievances against which the 
 assembly had before its dissolution complained so loudly and 
 so long. Among other things, of course, the workings and 
 the future of the seigniorial system of land tenure came in 
 for his lordship's attention. The study was necessarily a 
 cursory one, but it was conducted under the supervision of 
 a man surpassed by none of his contemporaries in power 
 of quick analysis or in ability to crystallize data into accurate 
 generalizations.^ The results of the whole investigation, 
 together with recommendations as to the future policy of 
 the home government, were in 1839 presented to Parliament 
 in Durham's famous " Report on the Affairs of British North 
 America." ^ 
 
 Durham recognized very clearly the wisdom of the British 
 authorities in seeking the extinction of the old French system of 
 land tenure. He pointed out that, while the rural population of 
 the province was increasing steadily, the amount of cultivated 
 land supporting this population was not increasing in the same 
 proportion. According to an estimate made in 1826, the popu- 
 lation of the various seigniories had more than quadrupled since 
 the loyalist immigration, that is to say, during the forty-two 
 years intervening between 1784 and 1826; but in this interval 
 the quantity of land under cultivation in the province had 
 increased by only one-third or thereabouts. Since 1826, as 
 Durham had every reason to suppose, the same anomaly of de- 
 velopment had been going on. The time was past, he declared, 
 for continuing the maintenance of a system which encouraged 
 this condition of affairs. He showed that the French rules of 
 succession to real property had caused the oblongs of land to 
 be so cut up into long narrow strips that healthy agricultural 
 progress was being strangled, and pointed to the northern shore 
 
 1 The only biography of Lord Durham is by Stuart J. Reid, The Life and Letters 
 of the First Earl of Durham (2 vols., London, 1906). 
 
 2 Report on the Affairs of British North America (London, 1839), " by the Earl 
 of Durham, Her Majesty's High Commissioner," etc.
 
 238 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 of the St. Lawrence, where from Quebec to Montreal the 
 alluvial land was shredded into mere ribbons, often with a river 
 frontage of a few rods and a depth of a mile or more. Along 
 this river-front ran the main road, — the carotid artery of 
 colonial intercourse, — and along the road the habitants had 
 built their dwellings, thus " giving the country of the seigniories 
 the appearance of one never-ending, straggling village." The 
 people were thus forced, he added, to devote their energies to 
 the pursuit of what was in his apinion " the worst possible 
 method of small farming." 
 
 The commissioner saw, however, that the faults were not all 
 on the side of the habitant. A good deal of the difficulty he 
 very properly laid at the door of the Englishmen who had 
 bought out seigniories from their French-Canadian owners, and 
 had then proceeded to exercise their seigniorial rights in a 
 manner "which the Canadian," said he, " reasonably regards as 
 oppressive." Differing from his dependents in race, religion, 
 and language, the new seignior needed to exercise much tact, 
 friendHness, and forbearance in order to get along amicably 
 with them. Too often, however, he displayed none of these 
 qualities. Hence it was in the general estrangement of the two 
 races that the report found one real cause of difficulties regard- 
 ing the land-tenure system. 
 
 Lord Durham did not condemn the advocates, notaries, and 
 other leaders who had stirred up the people against the pol- 
 icy of the administration ; he regarded it as an inevitable 
 consequence of the grant of representative, but not respon- 
 sible, government that popular leaders should become dema- 
 gogues. The system of seigniorial land tenure, he believed, 
 had passed its day of usefulness and should make way for a 
 more suitable policy. He did not believe, however, that any 
 radical steps toward its abolition should be undertaken by the 
 British Parliament, but thought that the whole problem should 
 be left for the new colonial government to solve for itself. In 
 general, Durham was disposed to rely upon the " efficacy of 
 reform in the colonial constitutional system for the removal of 
 every abuse in administration which defective institutions have 
 engendered." In a word, he thought that if the proper relation
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 239 
 
 between the elective and the appointive organs of colonial gov- 
 ernment were permanently determined in the way which he pro- 
 posed, the various grievances would in time right themselves. 
 One of Durham's entourage, Charles Duller, who ably assisted 
 his lordship in gathering information and data regarding the 
 land-tenure system in Lower Canada, outlined a definite 
 scheme for the commutation of seigniorial lands, according 
 to which the annual dues owing by either seignior or 
 habitant should be made an annual rent charge on the land, 
 which annual charge might at any time be commuted to a 
 lump sum on a reasonable basis. It is interesting to note that 
 this plan was substantially followed by the colonial legislature 
 when it undertook to arrange a scheme of commutation some 
 fifteen years later. 
 
 As a result of Durham's general recommendations, the British 
 Parliament, in 1840, passed the Canada Act, more commonly 
 known as the Act of Union, because by it the two provinces of 
 Lower and Upper Canada were united, with equal represen- 
 tation in a joint legislature.^ This new body met in the follow- 
 ing year, and lost little time in taking up the seigniorial problem 
 for solution. Its first step was to present to the governor- 
 general of the now united provinces an address asking for the 
 appointment of an impartial commission to examine the griev- 
 ances of landholders in Lower Canada and to report some 
 definite plan of remedy .^ To this request Governor Bagot' 
 acceded, naming Messrs. Buchanan, Taschereau, and Smith 
 as members of the commission desired.^ These gentlemen 
 made a very careful study of the situation, and though some- 
 what hampered, as they declared, by the fact that they had not 
 been vested with power to compel the attendance of witnesses 
 or to enforce the production of papers, they succeeded in laying 
 before the legislature, in October, 1843, an exhaustive report of 
 nearly forty closely-printed pages containing a considerable 
 
 ^ 3&4 Victoria, c. 35. This act may be conveniently found in Houston's Con- 
 stitutiotial Documents, 149-173. 
 
 2 Canada, Assembly Journals, September 7, 1 84 1. 
 
 8 The governor first appointed Messrs. Vanfelson, McCord, and Doucet ; but for 
 some reason these gentlemen declined to serve.
 
 240 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 amount of interesting and valuable information relating to the 
 subject of their inquiry. ^ 
 
 The report of the commission of 1843 began by tracing at 
 some length the vicissitudes of the feudal system since its first 
 establishment in Canada, and then proceeded to analyze in a gen- 
 eral way the various legal rights and duties of the seignior and 
 the habitant under the French dominion. This analysis is toler- 
 ably accurate and just to both parties, but the commissioners in 
 some cases displayed a disposition to generalize too broadly from 
 the data at hand. They gave it as their opinion that at the time 
 of the British conquest the Arrets of Marly (171 1) were still in 
 full force, and that, in consequence, the seignior was under legal 
 obHgation to subgrant his vacant lands to whoever should apply 
 for them, at the rate of dues customary in the neighborhood. 
 When he refused to do so, the governor and intendant were, 
 under the old dispensation, empowered to step in and make the 
 grant ; but in the exercise of this power who were the successors 
 of these French officials } To this question the commissioners 
 replied that, since the reestabHshment of French civil law by the 
 Quebec Act of 1774, the power had vested first in the court of 
 Common Pleas and later in its successor the court of King's 
 Bench, to which, on its establishment, certain spheres of juris- 
 diction formerly belonging to the court of Common Pleas had 
 been assigned. The Canada Tenures Act of 1825 had thus, they 
 maintained, unfairly " given to the seigniors an absolute and 
 unconditional property in the ungranted portions of their fiefs, 
 in direct violation of the wise and beneficent intentions of the 
 arrets of 171 1 . . . by which seigniors are bound to grant lands 
 to such persons as apply for them, subject only to the accus- 
 tomed rates and dues."^ 
 
 ^ " Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the laws 
 and other circumstances connected with the Seigniorial Tenure," 1843, Titles and 
 Documents, i. 45-91. A number of interesting documents are printed as an appendix 
 to this report {Ibid. 92-210). 
 
 2 The assertion of the commissioners that the judicial powers of the governor and 
 intendant of the old regime had passed to the high courts of the province is of doubt- 
 ful validity. Certainly neither the court of Common Pleas nor the court of King's 
 Bench had ever attempted to exercise any powers on the ground that they were the 
 successors of these officials. Cf. Angers, Resume de la Plaidoirie, etc. (1855), 93 ; 
 and see above, p. 220.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 24 1 
 
 The commission further affirmed that the people of the colony- 
 had certain well-established rights in the ungranted lands of 
 seigniories, — rights which the governor and intendant had stood 
 ready to enforce ; that the British authorities had on more than 
 one occasion pledged themselves to the observance and preser- 
 vation of those proprietary rights enjoyed by the inhabitants 
 of the colony at the time of the conquest ; and that the courts 
 of law had the power to enforce these rights in behalf of the 
 people. In 1825, however, said the commissioners, the Canada 
 Tenures Act had offered to permit the seigniors, for a small 
 consideration, to acquire absolute property in their ungranted 
 lands, thus defeating the right of the people at large to share 
 in these lands. 
 
 Passing to a consideration of the "present working of the 
 feudal system in the province," the report attempted to show 
 that this form of tenure was "in many respects vicious and . . . 
 productive of extreme injury." It " paralyzes the whole country 
 by its influence," ran the vehement words. "No system can be 
 devised better calculated to keep a man in perpetual subjection. 
 Under it, all the generous emotions of his nature are stifled. 
 Thus he gradually becomes impoverished ; he toils through 
 existence without the hope of relief, and transmits to his 
 posterity a worthless inheritance. Under the operation of 
 such a tenure, his right of property may become a mere delu- 
 sion ; as a moral being, he is degraded, and his position is one 
 of perpetual dependence." The present system, moreover, " is 
 no longer suited to the spirit of the age nor the actual wants of 
 the population ; it is the relic of a barbarous age, and, in its 
 practical operations, antagonistic to the growth and permanency 
 of free institutions." Of all the anathemas passed upon the feu- 
 dal system in Canada from its first establishment to its abolition, 
 whether by investigating officials, commissions, or legislative 
 bodies, none surpasses the foregoing in vigor and virulence. In 
 fact, the report of 1 843 breeds suspicion by the very violence of 
 its antagonism to the system. 
 
 The commission recommended, in conclusion, that the legis- 
 lature should proceed to the complete extinction of the seign- 
 iorial tenure, indemnifying the seigniors for the loss of such
 
 242 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 dues as could be shown to have a legal basis, but bearing in 
 mind that the position of the seignior, in relation to his un- 
 granted lands, was that of a trustee and not that of an owner. 
 Three different schemes for effecting the indemnification of the 
 seigniors were outlined: (i) that the habitants should pay- 
 to the seigniors a capital sum, whereof the annual cejis et rentes 
 would be equivalent to interest at the rate of six per cent, to- 
 gether with one lods et ventes ; (2) that they pay an annual rent 
 charge, to be agreed upon in lieu of all feudal dues and services ; 
 (3) that they pay one-fifth of the value of their holdings (deter- 
 mined by arbitration), in full commutation of all dues and ser- 
 vices. The commissioners did not advise the adoption of any 
 one of these three plans, but pointed out the advantages and 
 disadvantages of each. 
 
 As a result of the report, a bill was introduced into the 
 assembly, and was passed by both houses during the year 1845 
 under the title, "An Act the better to facilitate optional Com- 
 mutation of the Tenure of Lands eji roture in the Seigniories 
 and Fiefs of Lower Canada, into Wi-aX oi franc aleu rotiirierr ^ 
 Some four years later this act was amended in a few slight par- 
 ticulars.^ These two acts simply provided that the habitant 
 might arrange with his seignior to commute his feudal dues and 
 services for a lump sum mutually to be agreed upon ; and that 
 upon payment of such sum the habitant would receive from his 
 seignior the grant of his holding en franc alen roiurier, the form 
 of tenure which, during the French period, had most nearly 
 corresponded to the English system of tenure in free and 
 common socage. This particular provision was intended to re- 
 tain the lands under the French rules of inheritance ; for, except 
 in regard to this matter, the two forms of tenure were substan- 
 tially the same. 
 
 Up to the time when the first of these acts was passed (1845), 
 the habitant could not arrange for the commutation of his dues 
 to his seignior unless the seignior had first arranged for the 
 commutation of his own dues to the crown ; and very few of the 
 seigniors had chosen to do this. In fact only nine seigniorial 
 commutations had been arranged between 1825, when permis- 
 
 ^ StaUites of Canada, 8 Victoria, c. 42. ^ Ibid. 12 Victoria, c. 49.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 243 
 
 sion to commute was given, and 1846, a year after the new law 
 was passed.^ Nine commutations in twenty years scarcely prove 
 the existence of any strong desire on the part of the seigniors 
 to take advantage of the privilege afforded them. 
 
 Although the acts of 1845 and 1849 were designed to make 
 possible the commutation of the tenure of holdings within seign- 
 iories which had not yet been commuted, there were several 
 reasons for doubting that this end would be attained in any 
 general measure. The seigniors, for instance, might be counted 
 upon to stand out for full compensation for the loss of all dues 
 and services which they claimed, even though the legality of 
 some of these was not beyond question. There was, for ex- 
 ample, the corvee, which in many cases had not been exacted for 
 several years ; the right oifoiir banal, which had never been en- 
 forced at all ; and the right of the seignior over navigable rivers, 
 which had been claimed by some to be an incident of seigniorial 
 judicial power and hence to have been abrogated with the 
 latter after the conquest. Until seigniors and habitants 
 could agree as to what seigniorial claims were valid and what 
 were not, it would be very difficult to reach any accord in regard 
 to the sum to be paid in commutation of all dues. Then, too, 
 even if the amount could be satisfactorily agreed upon, most of 
 the habitants were so poor that it seemed impossible for them 
 to get sufficient funds to pay it in a lump sum. A few of them 
 were doubtless in positions to take advantage of the terms of 
 the acts ; but, as the lapse of a few years served to show, any 
 general commutation of the smaller holdings from tenure en 
 censive to tenure in free and common socage seemed to be pre- 
 vented by the two obstacles just mentioned. 
 
 As time went by, this view impressed itself upon the members 
 of the legislature. It was felt strongly that commutation must 
 be made compulsory in the case of both seignior and habitant ; 
 that, if necessary, the crown must forego the exaction of any 
 
 1 These commutations were as follows : Ste. Anne de la Perade, December 28, 
 1830 ; Beauharnois, March 10, 1833; Lotbiniere, December 31, 1835 5 Madawaska 
 and Temiscouata, December 5, 1838 ; Mont-Louis, June 6, 1839 ; Perthuis, April 7, 
 1841 ; Riviere de la Magdeleine and Pabos, March 8, 1842 ; Anse du Grand-Etang, 
 February 4, 1846. This list is printed in Correspondence between the Colonial Office 
 and the Governors of Canada, etc. (1853), 37.
 
 244 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 jsum from the seigniors in commutation of their dues; and that 
 ithe burden upon the habitants should be lightened as much as 
 possible, partly by exact definition of the legal rights of the 
 seignior, partly by permission to pay in annual instalments 
 instead of in a lump sum, and partly by assistance out of the 
 public treasury. 1 
 
 That a plan of commutation might be drafted along these 
 lines, the assembly in the spring of 185 1 appointed a special 
 committee to which it delegated this task.^ The committee, 
 after a number of sessions and hearings, presented its report,^ 
 together with the draft of a bill ; * but the legislation outlined 
 was not regarded as satisfactory by the leaders of the house, 
 and action upon it was accordingly postponed.^ In the year fol- 
 lowing, however, a new ministry came into office ; and in the 
 session of 1853 a government measure was introduced dealing 
 with the question of tenures in Lower Canada. In general 
 this measure proposed to afford seigniors compensation, amount- 
 ing to a small fixed annual sum per arpent, for the loss of all 
 rights, provided that such rights should be declared legal by 
 the courts ; but all seigniorial rights and dues other than the 
 right to this small annual rental were to be abrogated. After 
 a spirited debate the measure passed the assembly, but was 
 subsequently rejected by the council. This action of the upper 
 house greatly irritated the assembly, which showed its temper 
 by passing an address to the home authorities asking that the 
 council be made an elective instead of an appointive body.^ 
 
 The elections of 1854 made it clear that public sentiment was 
 strongly in favor of the abolition of the seigniorial system, for 
 a ministry pledged to accompHsh this end was established in 
 
 ^ Canada, Assembly Journals, June 26, 1 850. 
 
 2 The members of this committee were the Hon. L. T. Drummond, chairman, and 
 Messrs. Armstrong, Badgley, Boutillier, La Terriere, and Lemieux. 
 
 ^ Troisieme Rapport et Deliberations dii Comite Special de P Assemblee Legislative 
 . . . au Sujet de la Tenure Seignenriale {iS'ji). 
 
 * " Acte pour definir certains droits des seigneurs et des censitaires dans le Bas- 
 Canada, et pour en faciliter I'exercice," Ibid. Appendix A. 
 
 ^ Cf. The Seigniorial Question : its present Position ( 1 8154), " by a member of the 
 Legislative Assembly from Upper Canada" [Sir Francis Ilincks]. 
 
 8 Canada, Assembly Journals, February 14 to June 14, \%i,T„ passim.
 
 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 245 
 
 power.^ After some delay caused by difficulties connected 
 with the ministerial organization, the McNab-Morin ministry 
 prepared and laid before Parliament a comprehensive measure 
 providing for the complete abolition of the whole seigniorial 
 system. The measure encountered much opposition and under- 
 went several important amendments at the hands of the Legis- 
 lative Council, but finally passed both houses. Under the title 
 " An Act for the Abolition of Feudal Rights and Duties in 
 Lower Canada," it received the viceregal assent on December 
 18, 1854.2 
 
 In the first place, the act of 1854 repealed entirely the acts 
 of 1845 and 1849,^ but provided that deeds of commutation 
 granted under them should remain in full force and should have 
 the same effect as if the acts had not been repealed. It then 
 made provision for the appointment, by the governor-general, of 
 commissioners to such number as might be found necessary, 
 who should visit all the seigniories in Lower Canada and in 
 each draw up a schedule setting forth the total value of the 
 seigniory, the rights of the crown therein (or, in the case of 
 rear-fiefs, the rights of the dominant seignior), the amount of 
 land held by each habitant, and the annual dues and charges 
 payable therefor. With reference to this last item the schedule 
 was to differentiate the various charges and services, estimating 
 the annual value of those which were not already fixed in 
 money, such as the banal rights or the reservations.* 
 
 In order that the commissioners might act uniformly in 
 preparing their schedules, certain definite rules were laid down 
 for their guidance. In the case of dues payable in kind (grain, 
 poultry, fruits, etc.), they were instructed to obtain the average 
 prices of such commodities during the last fourteen years 
 " from the books of the merchants nearest the place or in such 
 
 1 The question of the secularization of the clergy reserves was an equally impor- 
 tant issue in this election. On the course of events during these years of high party 
 tension in the Canadas, see Gait, Canada, i84g to i8jg ; Dent, 77ie Last Forty 
 Years, vol. ii, chs. xxix-xxxvi ; David, Z' Union des Deux Canadas ; and Turcotte, 
 Le Canada sous /' Union, vol. ii. 
 
 2 18 Victoria, c. 3. 
 
 ^ 8 Victoria, c. 42, and 12 Victoria, c. 49. See above, p. 242, 
 * Sections ii-v.
 
 246 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Other manner as may be thought equitable "; and in computing 
 the annual value of personal labor (corvee) they were to 
 follow a similar procedure.^ Since rural and urban holdings 
 changed hands with different degrees of frequency, the com- 
 missioners were instructed to take this fact into consideration 
 in estimating the value of the lods et ventes, or alienation fines.^ 
 In determining the value of the banal rights, they were to 
 " estimate the probable decrease (if any) in the net yearly 
 income of the seignior arising from the loss of such rights."^ 
 The total value thus set on the lands of each habitant was to 
 become a fixed rent upon the lands, payable upon the day 
 and at the place at which the seigniorial dues had formerly 
 been payable, unless the seignior and the habitant should agree 
 upon some other time or place. 
 
 Since the work of the commissioners was of the highest 
 importance, the act gave them every facility for the proper 
 performance of their tasks. Before beginning the work of 
 computation in any seigniory, they were to give notice to that 
 effect to all concerned, putting " placards in English and French 
 at the door of every parish church in such seigniory for four 
 consecutive Sundays," stating the place, day, and hour at 
 which the work would begin. All parties were to have every 
 possible facility in the presentation of their views, and the 
 commissioners on the other hand were invested with wide 
 powers to enforce the production of information when neces- 
 sary. They might examine witnesses under oath, order the 
 production of land titles, accounts, and other documents, impose 
 fines for contempt, and command the services of all justices 
 or other peace officers in the province.* 
 
 Should a seignior or any twelve habitants challenge a com- 
 putation, the commissioner was required by the act to submit 
 his schedule to the revision of expert valuators, one to be 
 appointed by the seignior, one by the habitants in general 
 meeting, and a third by these two, unless the seignior and the 
 habitants could agree upon the third. The fees of such valu- 
 ators were to be paid from the public treasury.^ The governor- 
 
 1 Section vi. 1. ^ Section vi. 2. * Section vi. 5. 
 
 * Sections vii-ix. ^ Section x.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 247 
 
 general, moreover, was empowered to select, from the whole 
 corps of commissioners, a committee of four to act as a court 
 of revision to hear appeals against the schedules drawn up by- 
 individual commissioners, or against changes made by boards 
 of expert valuators ; but this court might make alterations 
 only when errors were clearly shown. ^ 
 
 The act provided that, when the schedule for any seigniory- 
 was completed and revised, copies of it should be deposited 
 with the proper governmental authorities, and legal notice of 
 such deposit be given in the official Gazette and in at least one 
 local newspaper.2 It then proceeded : " From and after the 
 date of the publication . . . every censitaire in such seigniory- 
 shall, by virtue thereof, hold his land in franc aleu rotiirier, 
 free and clear of all cens, rentes, lods et ventes, droit de banality, 
 droit de retrait, and other feudal or seigniorial dues, except the 
 rente constituce, which will be substituted for all seigniorial 
 duties and charges ; and every seignior shall thereafter hold 
 his domain and the unconceded lands in his seigniory, and all 
 . . . real estate now belonging to him in franc aleu roturier . . . 
 free and clear of all quint, relief or other feudal dues or duties 
 to the crown or to any seignior dominant of whom his fief or 
 seigniory is now held." Any reestabhshment of the feudal 
 system was definitely prohibited by the clause," No seignior as 
 such shall, after the said time, be subject to any onerous obliga- 
 tion towards his censitaires, or be entitled to any honorary- 
 rights, nor shall any land be granted by any seignior to be held 
 by any tenure other than franc aleu roturier, or subject to any 
 mutation fines or other feudal dues."^ 
 
 Provision was further made for the creation of a special reve- 
 nue fund to be raised by the issue of debentures, the proceeds 
 of which were to be applied to the reduction of the fixed annual 
 rentals set by the schedules upon the lands of the habitants. 
 Every seignior was to receive a fixed percentage on the total 
 amount of constituted rents established by the schedule in his 
 seigniory, after deducting the value of the crown dues ; and by 
 this percentage the annual rentals of all habitants were to be 
 reduced.^ 
 
 1 Section xii. ^ Section xiii. ' Section xiv. * Sections xvii-xix.
 
 248 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Finally, the act provided for the solution of a very important 
 difficulty, — the question as to what claims of seigniors were 
 valid at law and what were not. This was not a matter which 
 the legislature could very well determine, or one that could 
 properly be left to the commissioners ; for the right decision of 
 it assumed a thorough knowledge of the Custom of Paris and of 
 the various modifying edicts, ordinances, and decrees. Obvi- 
 ously, the seigniors could expect compensation only for such 
 alleged rights as might be shown to have a legal basis ; but as 
 to the exact extent of these rights there was a wide difference 
 of opinion. The legislature very properly decided, therefore, 
 to make provision for the temporary establishment of a special 
 court, to which should be referred the settlement of questions 
 relating to the validity of seigniorial claims for compensation. 
 The commissioners were not to complete their schedules until 
 the decisions of this court should have been filed. ^ 
 
 This special court was to consist of the chief-justice and 
 justices of the court of Queen's Bench, together with the chief- 
 justice and justices of the Superior Court for the province of 
 Lower Canada, — making fifteen judges in all.^ The attorney- 
 general of the United Provinces was instructed to draw up a 
 list of questions covering all possible matters in dispute, while 
 the seigniors and the habitants (acting through their counsels) 
 were permitted to submit such supplementary questions as they 
 might think fit. The tribunal was, in many ways, an extraordi- 
 nary one. It was an assemblage of judges, yet the subject in 
 hand was not a strictly judicial one ; the judges were to express 
 opinions rather than to give judgment. There was a court, but 
 no suitors, no issue, no evidence, no record, and no sentence. 
 The judges were simply to examine the questions as students of 
 legal history and to express their opinions. In the event of 
 disagreement, a majority was to prevail. 
 
 ^ Section xvi. 
 
 2 These were the Hon. Sir Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine, Bart., chief justice of the 
 court of Queen's Bench ; the Hon. Edward Bowen, chief justice of the Superior Court ; 
 the Hon. Messrs. Aylwin, Duval, and Caron of the court of Queen's Bench; and 
 the Hon. Messrs. Day, Smith, Vanfelson, C. Mondelet, Meredith, Short, Morin, and 
 Badgley of the Superior Court. The Hon, Mr. Justice D. Mondelet, being himself a 
 seignior, abstained from attendance.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 249 
 
 The court met on September 4, 1855, and was duly consti- 
 tuted. The Hon. L. H. Drummond, attorney-general, presented 
 a list of forty-six questions covering the whole range of matters 
 in dispute ; and on behalf of various seigniors and bodies of 
 habitants thirty more questions were filed. It was arranged 
 that the court should hear the arguments of counsel on the 
 merits of the different questions ; and an imposing array of 
 eminent Canadian lawyers appeared before it.^ Their argu- 
 ments were exhaustive and showed a close study of the com- 
 plicated legal points involved, especially that of Christopher 
 Dunkin, who appeared on behalf of some of the seigniors. 
 Although on most points the judges disagreed with him, his 
 argument, which was lengthy, comprehensive, and a model of 
 close legal reasoning, stands as perhaps the most scholarly and 
 able plea ever made before any Canadian judicial body. 
 
 After many sessions the Special Seigniorial Court, as it was 
 called, was able to frame answers to all the questions submitted.^ 
 In a few cases there was entire unanimity, but on almost every 
 important issue one or more of the justices disagreed with the 
 rest. The opinion of the majority was that the cens et rentes 
 had never been made uniform ; that the seignior was under 
 obHgation to subgrant his lands at customary rates, and hence 
 did not hold any full property in his ungranted lands ; that the 
 lods et ventes, the banalities, and the corvee were valid claims ; 
 but that prohibitions and reservations, except in so far as they 
 had been made for the protection of the seignior's obligation to 
 the crown, were without validity. In the course of the deliber- 
 ations, each member of the Special Court gave his individual 
 opinions on the various questions at issue, justifying his accord 
 with the answers agreed upon by the majority of his colleagues 
 or his dissent from them.^ A careful reading of these opinions 
 
 ^ Among the counsel were, in addition to the attorney-general (who was, unfortu- 
 nately, prevented by illness from attendmg most of the sessions), Messrs. F. R. 
 Angers, E. Barnard, and T. J. J. Loranger, Q. C, on behalf of the crown; and 
 Messrs. Christopher Dunkin, R. Mackay, and C. S. Cherrier, Q. C, on behalf of various 
 seigniors and others. 
 
 ^ These are printed as Proceedings of the Special Seigniorial Court held under the 
 authority of the Seigniorial Act of 18^4 (Quebec, 1856). 
 
 ^ These opinions, or Observations, were published as public documents, but com- 
 plete sets are now rare. For a discussion of their scope and value, see below, p. 261.
 
 250 ABOLITION- OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 serves to show that each judge made a very earnest, and some- 
 times elaborate, study of one or more of the legal phases pre- 
 sented by the seigniorial system and its history both in France 
 and in Canada. 
 
 It was upon a basis of the majority opinions that the sched- 
 ules of fixed rents were drawn up and put in force. As the 
 work of compiling these in all the seigniories took time, it 
 was some years before all had been completed and depos- 
 ited with the proper authorities. Meantime the legislature had 
 passed a short act changing a few provisions in the act of 1854 
 which had been found to need amendment, but which were of 
 no great importance.^ In the session of 1859 the colonial par- 
 liament appropriated the funds for the indemnification of the 
 seigniors, and with this measure completed the work of com- 
 mutation.2 The act of 1854 had exempted from the compul- 
 sory provisions which it contained the seigniories held by 
 the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Montreal, the " seigniories of the 
 late order of Jesuits," the seigniories either belonging to the 
 crown or held in trust by it for the Indians, and a few others 
 which it enumerated.^ In most of these, however, commuta- 
 tions were later effected by private agreement.'* 
 
 As the act of 1854 changed the tenure of lands, not to free 
 and common socage, but to franc aleii roturier, it did not intro- 
 
 1 "An Act to amend the Seigniorial Act of 1854" (18 Victoria, c. 3). 
 
 2 In some cases, however, the amounts were not paid over to the seigniors until 
 as late as 1864. 
 
 3 Act of 1854, §xxxv. 
 
 * After the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIX in 1773, the 
 Jesuit seigniories in Lower Canada passed into the hands of the crown; but those 
 who had been members of the order were supported by the revenues during the re- 
 mainder of their lives. When, in 1814, the order was reestablished by Pope Pius 
 VII, it began a movement for regaining its old estates ; but recovery was no longer 
 possible, for much of the land had passed into other hands by purchase from the 
 crown. In 1888, however, by the Jesuits' Estates Act, the government of the province 
 of Quebec granted the Papal See the sum of 3 400,000 in order to obtain from the 
 Catholic church and its orders a surrender of all their claims to the escheated 
 lands. This measure evoked strong protest from the Protestant section of the popu- 
 lation, and the Dominion government was called upon to disallow the act. This, 
 however, it refused to do. While the ecclesiastical claims against the lands had no 
 legal validity, it was found that, in an overwhelmingly Catholic community, the clerical 
 bitterness served seriously to impair the value of such of the lands as the government 
 still held. See Thv/zXifts, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Ixxi. 392-393.
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SEIGNIORIAL SYSTEM. 25 I 
 
 duce the rules of English law relating to the alienation, bequest, 
 and inheritance of lands : these matters continued to be regulated 
 by the rules of French law. It was therefore thought advisable 
 that the civil laws and procedure of Lower Canada should be 
 revised and recodified ; and in 1857 the attorney-general secured 
 the passage of a measure establishing a commission to under- 
 take this work. Messrs. Justices Caron, Day, and Morin, who 
 had been members of the Special Court, were intrusted with the 
 undertaking, and completed it with high credit in 1864. 
 
 The seigniorial system in Canada had, by the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, clearly demonstrated its unsuitability to its 
 new social and economic environment, and by a large proportion 
 of the people the prolongation of its existence had come to be 
 regarded as a pubHc evil. The terms upon which the abolition 
 was effected were, however, by most of the seigniors regarded as 
 unfair, and it is altogether probable that, despite the compen- 
 sation, most seigniorial properties were worth less after the 
 passing of the act than they had been before 1854. Strong 
 protests were made by the seigniors against the slowness with 
 which the schedules were drawn up, and it was claimed that 
 many commissioners prolonged their work unduly in order to 
 increase their remuneration. The censitaires were given the 
 option of commuting their annual fixed rentals by the payment 
 of a lump sum, the determination of which was provided by the 
 act. Comparatively few of them, however, took advantage of 
 this provision, and to the present day they or their descendants 
 continue to pay their retite constitute with more or less punctu- 
 ality. Most of the habitants still refer to their landlord as "the 
 seignior," though for a full half century no such title has been 
 recognized by the laws of the province. 
 
 The problem of abolition was a difficult one, but it may be 
 questioned whether its solution was not attended with as little 
 injustice as usually accompanies such important changes. That 
 the Canadian legislators of 1854 were able to cut away the 
 foundation upon which the social order of Lower Canada rested, 
 without doing any violence to the superstructure, is a tribute 
 alike to their moderation and to their progressive spirit.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 Throughout this monograph an earnest endeavor has been made to 
 observe the recognized canons of sound historical writing by giving 
 definite references, page by page, to the sources from which informa- 
 tion has been drawn. Nevertheless, it may not be superfluous to sum- 
 marize in a general way the scope and the relative value of the various 
 materials of which use has been made. 
 
 One of the most extensive, and at the same time the most satisfactory, 
 sources of data for the study of land tenure and the state of agriculture 
 during the French period is the formidable collection of manuscript 
 material commonly known as the Correspondance Ghierale. This 
 mass of documents comprises a very large part of the correspond- 
 ence, memoirs, reports, and returns transmitted by the various officials 
 of New France to the home government throughout the entire period 
 of French dominion in North America. The collection also contains 
 many despatches from the king and minister to the governor and in- 
 tendant of Canada ; for when the French authorities withdrew from the 
 Western world they took with them all their confidential archives. 
 
 This vast store of contemporary material is now in the archives of the 
 Minist^re des Colonies, which are located in the attic story of the Pa- 
 vilion de Flore, in the south wing of the Louvre. More than a score 
 of years ago, officials of the Dominion government began the examina- 
 tion and classification of this material for the Canadian archives under 
 the supervision of Mr. Joseph Marmette ; but after a portion of the 
 work had been done the project was interrupted, to be resumed some 
 time later under the general direction of Mr. Edouard Richard, and 
 continued till his death a few years ago. At the present time the 
 work of transcribing the documents is again being pushed forward. A 
 large part of the collection was first examined and the subject-matter of 
 the documents calendared chronologically ; these calendars may be 
 found in the annual Report on Canadian Archives (ed. Douglas Brymner) 
 for the years 1 885-1 887, 1899- . Such of the transcripts as have been 
 made are in the Dominion Archives (Series F), at Ottawa, and comprise 
 at present nearly two hundred and fifty large folio volumes. 
 
 253
 
 254 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 As yet but a very small portion of this Correspondance Generate has been 
 rendered available in printed form. Extracts from a large number of the 
 documents have been printed in the Collectio7i de Manuscrits conte?iani 
 Lettres, Memoires, et autres Documents Historiques relatifs a la Nouvelle- 
 France, recueillis aux archives de la Province de Quebec, ou copies a 
 Petranger (4 vols., Quebec, 1883-1885) ; but the accuracy of this col- 
 lection has been seriously called in question. Some of the documents 
 may be found printed in Pierre Margry's Relations et Mhnoirs inedits, 
 pour servir a PHistoire de la France dans les Pays d'' Outre Mer, tires 
 des archives du Minis tere de la Marine et des Colonies (Paris, 1865), 
 and in his Decojwertes et Ftablissemetits des Franqais dans P Quest (6 
 vols., Paris, 1879-1888) ; but these papers relate mainly to discovery and 
 exploration. A few of the more important reports are given in Henry 
 Harrisse's Notes pour servir a P Histoire . . . de la Nouvelle- France 
 (Paris, 1872) ; and some fragmentary extracts and incidental quotations 
 from the more significant pieces are printed in the appendices to Francis 
 Parkman's various works, more particularly in the appendix to his Old 
 Regime in Cattada. Parkman, it may be added, had a large number of 
 the more important documents in the Correspondance Generate copied 
 for his own use ; and these transcripts are now in the library of the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Many of the papers which 
 have some bearing on intercolonial relations are included in Volume 
 IX of the Documetits relating to the Colonial History of New York 
 (ed. O'Callaghan and Fernow, 15 vols.. New York, 1853-1883). 
 
 In 1 85 1 the Legislative Assembly of Canada ordered that such parts 
 of the correspondence as had relation to the seigniorial system in the 
 colony should be published for the use of its members, and of others 
 who at that time were deeply interested in the movement for the aboli- 
 tion of the system. Consequently a small blue-book entitled Corre- 
 spondefice bettueen the French Government and the Governors and 
 Intendants of Canada relative to the Siigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1853) 
 was published, copies being issued in both French and English. This 
 volume appears, however, to have been compiled hastily and without 
 proper care ; for it is not at all complete within its announced scope. 
 
 The correspondence between the British government and the colonial 
 officials relative to the land-tenure system after the conquest is preserved 
 in the collections of the State Paper Office. It has been properly calen- 
 dared in the annual Rep07-t on Caftadia?i Archives for the years 1890— 
 1893, along with the other documents in the State Paper Office relating to 
 Canadian affairs. The Haldimand collection is similarly calendared in 
 the annual reports for the years 1886-1889. In 1851 the Legislative
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 255 
 
 Assembly of Canada ordered that such documents in this correspondence 
 as had any relation to the seigniorial system should be transcribed and 
 printed ; accordingly a small publication bearing the title Correspotid- 
 ence between the Colonial Office and the Governors of Canada relative 
 to the Seigniorial and Feudal Tenure (Quebec, 1853) was issued in both 
 languages. A comparison with the calendars shows, however, that sev- 
 eral important documents were overlooked by the compilers. 
 
 Of equal importance with the Correspondance Generate is the collec- 
 tion of Edits, Ordonnatices Royaux, Declarations, et Arrets du Conseil 
 d^Etat du Roi concernant k Canada (2 vols., Quebec, 1 803-1 806; 
 later edition, enlarged and improved, 3 vols., Quebec, 1854-1856). Of 
 the latter set (which is the one referred to throughout this study under 
 the general title oi Edits et Ordonnatices'), the first volume contains the 
 Edits et Ordonnances Royaux, and the Arrets du Conseil d 'Etat du Roi 
 relating to the affairs of New France ; the second contains the Arrets 
 et Reglements du Conseil Superieur de Quebec, and the Ordoimances et 
 Jugcments des Intendants du Canada, the latter comprising the period 
 1 705-1 759 only. The third volume, which is entitled Completnetit des 
 Ordomiances et Jugements des Gouverneurs et Intendants du Canada, 
 contains a large number of decrees issued by governors and intendants, 
 as well as the commissions of these officers and of other royal officials 
 in the colony. The collection is a most valuable one, admirably indexed 
 both chronologically and alphabetically; and on any topic connected 
 with the social or the economic life of the French period it is an indis- 
 pensable source of the most useful data. It was printed in both English 
 and French at the public expense ; but, although a large edition was 
 published, sets are now rather difficult to obtain. 
 
 In 185 1 the Legislative Assembly of Canada requested that a volume 
 be compiled containing all the edicts, ordinances, declarations, and 
 decrees relating directly to the seigniorial tenure ; and in the following 
 year this request met response in the issue by the queen's printer of a 
 stout octavo publication entitled Edicts, Ordinances, Declarations, and 
 Decrees relative to the Seigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1852), printed in 
 both English and French. This collection is, however, very incomplete, 
 for it omits many important decrees which have a direct bearing on the 
 question with which it deals. For this reason references are made, 
 throughout the present study, to the French edition of the general col- 
 lection of Edits et Ordonnances rather than to this special compilation. 
 
 The records of the Superior Council at Quebec have been preserved 
 in fifty-six ponderous manuscript volumes covering the period from 
 September 18, 1663, to April 8, 1760. Of these the records from 1663 to
 
 256 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 1 716 have been printed \x\. Jugements et Deliberations du Conseil Souve- 
 7-ain de la Noia'elle- France (6 vols., Quebec, 1885-1891), a compilation 
 which is a model of scholarly editing. The registers of the royal court 
 of the Pr^vote at Quebec are preserved in the provincial archives at 
 Quebec, but many volumes are lacking. These records have not yet 
 been made available in published form, but are now being transcribed 
 for the federal archives and will, it is hoped, be printed in due course. 
 Meanwhile, some of the more important decisions of the court of the 
 Pr^vot^ at Quebec may be found in J. F. Perrault's Extraits ou Prece- 
 dents, tires des Registres de la Prevoste de Quebec (Quebec, 1824). 
 It is beyond reasonable doubt that the Old Council {Pancien conseil), 
 which preceded the Sovereign (Superior) Council, also kept registers ; 
 but a diligent search on the part of various Canadian antiquarians has 
 not served to bring them to light. It is more than likely that they 
 were destroyed by the fire which consumed the intendant's palace in 
 1 713. The absence of these records is regrettable; for they would 
 unquestionably serve to throw light upon certain phases of the seigniorial 
 system before 1663, which, for want of reliable data, must be passed 
 over almost untouched. 
 
 The various orders in council issued by the British authorities in 
 Canada, from the establishment of civil government in 1764 to the in- 
 stitution of representative government in 1 791, are to be found in Ordi- 
 nances made for the Province of Quebec by the Governor and Council 
 since the Establishment of Civil Government (Quebec, 1767), and in 
 Ordinances made and passed by the Governor and Legislative Council 
 of the Province of Quebec, and now in force in the Province of Lower 
 Ca?iada (Quebec, 1792); but these collections are not entirely com- 
 plete. 
 
 During the years 185 2-1 854 a very important pubHcation appeared, 
 entitled Pieces et Docufnents relatifs a la Tenure Seigneuriale (2 vols., 
 Quebec). An English edition containing substantially the same mate- 
 rial, but differently arranged, was issued at the same time and called 
 Titles and Documents relating to the Seigniorial Tenure. The first 
 volume contains a number of miscellaneous documents ; but to a con- 
 siderable extent it duplicates the small compilation of Correspondence 
 betiveen the Colonial Office and the Governors of Canada already re- 
 ferred to. In the foregoing pages reference has always been made to 
 the English edition of this volume, since the documents contained in it 
 were originally issued in that language. The second volume, which has 
 been found extremely valuable for the purposes of this study, contains 
 copies of the title-deeds of over three hundred of the most important
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 2$/ 
 
 seigniorial grants. The French edition of this volume is usually referred 
 to by one of its sub-titles, Titres des Seigneuries, or Titres Seigneiiriaiix ; 
 of these the former has been used throughout this monograph. 
 
 The edicts of the king ratifying concessions en fief in the colony may 
 be found in Edits et Ordonnances, vol. i ; and, in response to a request 
 made by the Legislative Assembly, they were also printed separately as 
 Brevets de Ratification (Quebec, 1853). In tracing the descent of 
 seigniories from hand to hand, the Fealty Rolls (Aetes de Foi et Hom- 
 mage) preserved at Ottawa are most serviceable ; abstracts of these 
 rolls are published in the Report on Canadian Archives for the years 
 1 883-1 885. The task of the student who endeavors to follow the 
 growth and changes in colonial population during the old regime has 
 been greatly simplified by Johnson's Su?mnary 0/ the Censuses of Canada, 
 1665-1871 (Ottawa, 1876). 
 
 On the topography of the seigniorial system a fruitful source of data 
 are the Cadastres, or topographical and descriptive records compiled 
 from the aveux et denombretnents made from time to time by the seign- 
 iors. In 1863 an abridgment of these records was published at Quebec 
 in four parts, as follows : Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries du District 
 de Quebec, 2 vols. ; Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries du District de 
 Montreal, 3 vols. ; Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries des Trois-Rivieres, 
 I vol. ; Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries appartenant a la Couronne, 
 I vol. Extremely useful works on the topography of the seigniories 
 are Joseph Bouchette's British Dojtiinions in North America (2 vols., 
 London, 1831), and the same writer's earlier volume, Description Topo- 
 graphique de la Province du Bas- Canada (London, 1815). 
 
 The movement for the modification, and later for the abolition, of the 
 seigniorial system in Lower Canada brought forth a number of interesting 
 publications. Among the earlier of these, special value attaches to the 
 four compilations of the laws of the French period which were published 
 under the auspices of Governor Carleton in 1 772-1 773 (see above, p. 
 198, note). F. J. Cugnet's Traite de la Loi des Fiefs (Quebec, 1775) 
 and Traite de la Police (Quebec, 1775) ^""^ useful commentaries on the 
 legal system of the old regime in Canada by a jurist who was thoroughly 
 versed in his subject. Of much less value (for reasons given above, 
 p. 202) is Francis Maseres's Draught of an Act of Parliainent for 
 settling the Laws of the Province of Quebec (London, [1771]) ; but 
 there is a considerable amount of very interesting contemporary 
 data in the other works of Maseres, — A Collection of several Cotnniis- 
 sions and other public Instruments . . . relating to the State of the 
 Province of Quebec (London, 1772), Additional Papers concerning the
 
 258 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 Province of Quebec (London, 1776), and An Account of the Proceed- 
 in<^s of the British and other Inhabitants of Quebec (London, 1775). 
 Mention may also be made of James Marriott's Plan of a Code of Laws 
 for the Province of Quebec (London, 1774). 
 
 The various debates in the Legislative Assembly with reference to 
 the seigniorial question may be found in the journals of that body. 
 Journals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, 1 792-1837 (53 
 vols.) ; and the proceedings of the Legislative Council relating to the 
 same subject are on record in fournals of the Legislative Council of 
 Lower Canada, 1 792-1 837 (25 vols.). The parliamentary proceedings 
 leading toward the abolition of the seigniorial tenure in 1854 are 
 printed in full m Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, 1841— 
 1866 (48 vols.), and Journals of the Legislative Cowicil of Canada, 
 1841-1866 (44 vols.). The reports of the various commissions and 
 committees appointed to investigate the workings and effects of the 
 seigniorial system are usually printed in the appendices to the annual 
 volumes of the foregoing journals ; and the more important reports, such 
 as those of 1790 and 1843, are also printed in Titles and Documents 
 mentioned above (p. 256). In 1853 a small publication, Debats dans 
 rAssemblee Legislative sur la Tentire Seigneuriale, was published at Que- 
 bec ; but this contains only a small portion of the more important debates. 
 
 Some of the legislative investigations on the subject, both in England 
 and in Canada, during the period 1841-1854 were very exhaustive. 
 Special attention should be called, for example, to the Report of the 
 Committee on the State of the Civil Government of Canada (1828); 
 the Report of the Committee on the Affairs of Lower Canada ; with 
 Evidence (1834-1837) ; the Report of the Cofnmissioners on the Griev- 
 atices complained of in Lower Canada (1837) ; and the Troisieme Rap- 
 port et Deliberations du Comite Special de V Assemblee Legislative 
 (Quebec, 185 1), which handles well some details of the seigniorial 
 system. The famous Report on the Affairs of British North America, 
 " by the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty's High Commissioner and 
 Governor-General of British North America" (London, 1839 ; new edi- 
 tion without the valuable appendices, London, 1900), devotes compara- 
 tively little space to a consideration of the movement for the abolition 
 of the old tenure ; but such consideration as it does give to the matter 
 incidentally is of the highest interest and value, for in every paragraph 
 this epoch-marking state paper embodies the genius of a master hand. 
 
 The Seigniorial Tenures Abohtion Act of 1854, and the amending act, 
 may be found in Statutes of Canada, 1841-1866 ; they are also printed 
 in a separate volume with an excellent analytical index (Quebec, 1854)-
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 259 
 
 Considerable light is thrown on the workings of the seigniorial system, 
 and upon its relation to the general discontent during the period between 
 the conquest and 1854, by the various works of travel and description 
 in which this era was uncommonly fruitful. Volumes of this class which 
 give more than cursory sketches of the matter are, for example, Laroche- 
 foucault-Liancourt's Travels in the United States . . . with an authen- 
 tic account of Lower Canada (4 vols., London, 1803) ; George Heriot's 
 Travels through the Canadas (London, 1807) ; John Lambert's Travels 
 through Canada (3 vols., London, 1814); Joseph Sansom's Sketches of 
 Lower Canada (New York, 181 7) ; John Martin's Travels in Canada 
 (London, 1824); and Sir Francis Head's £ migrant (London, 1847). 
 
 When, about the middle of the nineteenth century, the movement 
 for the abolition of seigniorialism reached its final stage, there ap- 
 peared a veritable flood of pamphlets, articles, and other campaign 
 literature dealing with the question from almost every point of view. 
 Most of these were written either by strong partisans or by strong op- 
 ponents of abolition, and few have more than a mere passing interest as 
 showing the extent to which public feeling on the matter was wrought 
 up. Those which have proved of some service in the preparation of the 
 present volume are the following : J. C. Tach^, A Plan for the Commuta- 
 tion of the Seigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1854), which has in its appen- 
 dix some serviceable statistical data and some valuable tables ; 
 Robert Abraham, Some Remarks upon the French Tenure of " Franc 
 Aleu Roturier" and on its relation to the Feudal and other Tenures 
 (Montreal, 1849) ; Clement Dumesnil, De F Abolition des Droits 
 Feodaux ei Seigneuriaux en Canada (Quebec, 1855) ; Alexis Kier- 
 kowski, The Question of the Seigniorial Tenure in Lower Canada 
 reduced to a Question of Landed Credit (Quebec, 1850) ; [A. X. Ram- 
 bau], Le Bill Seigneurial expose sous son Vrai Jour, etc. (Montreal, 
 1855) ; [Sir Francis Hincks], The Seigniorial Question: its Present 
 Position (Quebec, 1854) ; the anonymous pamphlet, Quelques Avis d'lin 
 Cultivateur aux Censitaires du Bas- Canada au sufetde la Loi d' Abolition 
 de la Tenui-e Seigneuriale (Quebec, 1855) ; Paie, Pauvre Peuple, Paie I 
 "parle Frere de Jean-Baptiste " (Quebec, 1855); and the pamphlet 
 containing the proceedings of La Convention Afiti-Seigneuriale de J/<?«- 
 /m?/ (Montreal, 1854). 
 
 Among this plethora of pamphlets the closing years of the agitation 
 brought forth one publication which must be singled out for special 
 emphasis because of its comprehensiveness, lucidity, and real scholarly 
 value. This was Christopher Dunkin's Address at the Bar of the Legis- 
 lative Assembly of Canada on behalf of certain Seigfiiors in Lower
 
 26o BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 Canada, against the Second Reading of the Bill for the Abolition of the 
 Seigniorial Tenure (Quebec, 1853). Dunkin's researches went deep into 
 someof the more complicated legal phases of the seigniorial question ; and 
 his argument displays a wealth of learning in feudal law, as well as a 
 close study of the application of some of its provisions in the colony. 
 The analytical table of title-deeds appended to the publication is of 
 prime value in simplifying the task of examining the large number of 
 these documents. Unfortunately, Mr. Dunkin confined himself, in the 
 main, to an attempt to show that the seigniors had full property in their 
 unconceded lands, and were not to be regarded as mere trustees of the 
 crown, — a thesis which even the most convincing jurist could scarcely 
 have found it possible to prove in view of the arret of 171 1 and the other 
 enactments which placed the seigniors under obligation to subgrant their 
 lands at the customary rate of dues and services. 
 
 The act of 1854, which abolished the old tenures, provided for the 
 creation of a special court to unravel some knotty legal problems which 
 the legislature wisely enough did not assume to solve, but upon the solu- 
 tion of which depended, in part at any rate, the amount of compensation 
 to be paid the seigniors for the loss of their rights and privileges. All 
 the parties directly or indirectly concerned were represented before this 
 court by able counsel (see above, p. 249), and the arguments of the 
 leading counsel representing the different interests were subsequently 
 published. Once again Mr. Dunkin made an elaborate appeal on 
 behalf of the seigniors, his printed address to the court covering some 
 two hundred and twenty closely printed pages. This publication, entitled 
 The Case of the Seigtiiors of Lower Canada (Montreal, 1855), contains 
 some new matter ; but to a large extent it duplicates the erudite coun- 
 sel's address at the bar of the Legislative Assembly a couple of years 
 before. Dunkin's argument is supplemented by those of his colleagues, 
 Robert Mackay, The Case in Part of the Seigniors of Lower Canada 
 (Montreal, 1855), and C. S. Cherrier, Memoire contenant tin Resume du 
 Plaidoyer . . . sur les Questions soumises a la Decision des Juges de la 
 Cour (Montreal, 1855). Arguments on the other side of the question 
 were put forth by T. J. J. Loranger, Memoire compose de la Plaidoine . . . 
 devant la Cour Seigneuriale (Montreal, 1855), and by F. R. Angers, 
 Resume de la Plaidoirie . . . a VAppui des Propositions sou?nises a la 
 Cour par le Procureur-General (Montreal, 1855). These various 
 addresses are all of value as covering different phases of the subject. 
 
 The Special Court delivered its decisions in the form of answers to 
 the large number of questions submitted to it ; and in addition each 
 justice recited his own opinions and observations, stating at some length
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 261 
 
 the reasons which led him to side with the majority or the minority of 
 his colleagues, as the case might be. These opinions and observations 
 were subsequently printed in full at the public expense, under the general 
 editorship of Messieurs Lelievre and Angers. They are entitled Lower 
 Canada Reports : Seigniorial Questio7is (Quebec and Montreal, 1856), 
 and iill three substantial octavo volumes. Of the various Observations, 
 that of Chief-Justice Sir Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine, Bart., is the most 
 elaborate and the most illuminating. Sir Louis was quite the most 
 accomplished Canadian jurist of his generation, and his opinions bear 
 the marks of ripe legal scholarship. He devotes more than four hun- 
 dred pages to a consideration of the legal status of some five or six dif- 
 ferent seigniorial claims, and in each case gives abundant evidence of 
 his rare analytical power. Of the very highest interest, for example, 
 are his discussions of the origin and nature of the seigniorial obligation 
 to concede lands, of the question whether the rate of cens was ever fixed 
 uniformly throughout the colony, and of the nature and scope of the 
 right of mill banality. While the present writer has had occasion, in the 
 course of this study, to differ from his lordship's opinions on more 
 than one important point, he has done so in no case lightly or without 
 sincere regret that the logic of facts has seemed to compel divergence. 
 
 The observations of the Hon. Mr. Justice Mondelet, although much 
 less extended than those of his senior colleague, are not less scholarly. 
 They are of special interest, moreover, from the fact that on almost 
 every disputed point Mondelet reached a conclusion at variance with 
 that agreed upon by a majority of the court. The other justices of 
 the Special Court all discuss, in their printed Observations, various 
 phases of the questions at varying lengths ; but on the whole these dis- 
 cussions add surprisingly Httle of importance to the opinions of Lafon- 
 taine and Mondelet. These publications comprise the opinions and 
 observations of the Hon. Messrs. Justices Aylwin, Badgley, Bowen, 
 Caron, Day, Duval, Meredith, Short, and Smith. One of the members 
 of the court, the Hon. Mr. Justice Vanfelson, died during the sittings of 
 the tribunal, and his observations were not included. 
 
 The whole collection forms a store of instructive discussions which 
 cannot but be of the highest service to any student of the later history 
 of feudal institutions. Its great limitation lies in the fact that the ob- 
 servations deal only with those points of the seigniorial system which 
 were the subjects of dispute between the seigniors and the habitants 
 in 1854. With many of the most important incidents of the old tenure 
 — as, for example, the lods et ventes, the corvee, the judicial rights, the 
 honorary privileges of seigniors, and the whole physical aspect of seign-
 
 262 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 iorialism — the opinions are not concerned at all. The justices discuss 
 elaborately the legal bases of disputed seigniorial claims, but give no at- 
 tention to the actual workings of the various incidents of the seigniorial 
 system. They therefore cover at best but a small section of the whole 
 field. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing sources of information, a number of 
 general works have been freely drawn upon for incidental data. On 
 the personnel of the system, much has been taken from Benjamin Suite's 
 monumental Histoire des Canadiens-Franqais (8 vols., Montreal, 1882- 
 1884) ; while works of prime value on the genealogy of the seigniors and 
 the noblesse in New France are Francois Daniel's Histoire des Grandes 
 Families Fran^aises du Canada {M.on\.xt2i\, 1867), and Cyprien Tanguay's 
 Dictionnaire Genealogique des Families Canadiennes depuis la Fondation 
 de la Colonic jusqii' a nos jours (7 vols., Montreal, 1 871-1890). Tan- 
 guay's Repertoire General du Clerge Canadien (Quebec, 1868) is of 
 value on the personnel of the ecclesiastical seigniories. 
 
 Three excellent treatises on the legal history of New France are Ed- 
 mond Lareau's Histoire du Droit Canadien, depuis les Origines de la 
 Colonie jusqu' a nos Jours (2 vols., Montreal, 1888-1889) ; Doutre and 
 Lareau's Histoire Generate du Droit Civil Canadien (Montreal, 1872) ; 
 and B. A. Testard de Montigny's Histoire du Droit Canadien (Montreal, 
 1869). Each of the two latter includes a number of important legal 
 documents relating to land tenure and to the regulation of succession to 
 real property. A much older work of less service is McCarthy's Dic- 
 tionnaire de VAncien Droit du Canada (Quebec, 1809). 
 
 Many contemporary references to seigniorial matters may be found 
 in the writings of the Jesuits, which, in the collection entitled The 
 Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (ed. R. G. Thwaites, 73 vols., 
 1 896-1 901), are now accessible in completeness. There is also some 
 scattered material in the larger contemporary histories of the old regime, 
 such as Marc Lescarbot's Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (ed. E. Tross, 
 3 vols., Paris, 1866) ; F. X.Charlevoix's Histoire et Description Generate 
 de la Nouvelle-France (ed. J. G. Shea, 6 vols.. New York, 1866-187 2) ; 
 Gabriel Sagard's Histoire du Canada (ed. E. Tross, 4 vols., Paris, 1865- 
 1866); and Nicholas Denys's Description Geographique et Historique 
 des Costes de I'Amerique Septentrionale (2 vols., Paris, 1672). 
 
 On the social life of the French era there are some interesting com- 
 ments in Lahontan's Nouveaux Voyages (2 vols., The Hague, 1705, and 
 many subsequent editions), and in Peter Kalm's Travels into North 
 America (2 vols., London, 1772). 
 
 The later historians have paid very little attention to the seigniorial
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 263 
 
 system. Some works, however, which afford information upon various 
 matters that influenced its development, especially in its later stages, 
 are William Kingsford's History of Canada (10 vols., Toronto, 1887- 
 1898), a prosy work but containing much serviceable material; WiUiam 
 Smith's History of Caiiada (2 vols., Quebec, 18 15), containing a number 
 of documents not elsewhere published; F, X. Garneau's Histoire dti 
 Canada (4 vols., Montreal, 1882-1883), which shows excellent judgment 
 on men and measures ; and Robert Christie's History of the late Prov- 
 ince of Lower Canada (6 vols., Montreal, 1866), which is particularly 
 valuable on the period following the conquest. 
 
 On the general history of the movement for the abolition of the old 
 tenures, serviceable works are Louis P. Turcotte's Le Cafiada sous 
 r Ufiion (2 vols., Quebec, 1871-1872) ; J. C. Dent's The Last Forty 
 Years (2 vols., Toronto, 1881) ; Sir Francis Hincks's Retniniscences 
 (Montreal, 1884) ; and F. Bradshaw's Self- Gover?i?nent in Canada 
 (London, 1903). 
 
 Biographical works which necessarily contain incidental infor- 
 mation bearing on seigniorial relations are Francis Parkman's Count 
 Frontenac (Frontenac ed., 2 vols., Boston, 1901) ; Lorin's Le Comte 
 de Frontenac (Paris, 1895) ; Thomas Chapais's fean Talon (Quebec, 
 1904) ; Gabriel Gravier'sZa Salle (Paris, 187 1) ; and Auguste Gosselin's 
 Vie de Laval {2 vols., Quebec, 1890) and fean Bourdon (Quebec, 1904). 
 
 There is an excellent but very short chapter on " Canadian Feudal- 
 ism" in Parkman's Old Regime in Canada (2 vols., Boston, 1901) ; 
 and references to various details of the seigniorial system are to be found 
 in almost all of the same writer's imperishable volumes, which, taken as 
 a whole, give the most faithful portrayal of the whole political, social, and 
 economic organization of New France. Edmond Lareau has incorpo- 
 rated into his Melaiiges Historiques et Litteraires (Montreal, 1871) a 
 short chapter entitled " De la Fdodalit6 en Canada," which is, however, 
 little more than a digest of part of Lafontaine's Observations. In the 
 third volume of J. Castell Hopkins's Canada : an Encyclopcedia of the 
 Country (5 vols., Toronto, 1898-1900), there are articles on "The Seign- 
 iorial Tenure in Canada " by Benjamin Suite, and " The Abolition of 
 the Seigniorial Tenure " by Alphonse Desjardins. W. P. Greenough's 
 Canadian Folk- Life and Folk-Lore (New York, 1897) attempts, in a 
 chapter on "The Feudal System," to give a popular sketch of the subject. 
 
 Local histories to which one may turn with confidence for information 
 within their scope are J. Edmond Roy's Histoire de la Seigneurie de 
 Lauzon (5 vols., Montreal, 189 7- 1904) ; Jodoin and Vincent's Histoire 
 de Longueuil (}A.ovi\.xe3\, 1889); F. X. Gatien's Histoire de la Paroisse
 
 264 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 du Cap-San fe (Quebec, 1 8S 4) ; Benjamin Suite's Chrotiique Trifluvienne 
 (Montreal, 1879) ; and Robert Sellar's History of Hufitingdon, Chateau- 
 gay, and Beauharnois (Huntingdon, 1888). 
 
 Works of a literary rather than of a historical nature which deal to 
 some extent with the daily life of seignior and habitant are William 
 Kirby's Chiend'Ori^evf York and Montreal, 1877); Philippe A. de 
 Gasp6's Les Ancie?is Canadiens (Quebec, 1863) ; H. R. Casgrain's 
 Une Paroisse Canadienne an xvii' Steele (Quebec, 1880) ; and Sir J. 
 M. Le Moine's Maple Leaves (7 series, Quebec, 1863-1906), and 
 Chronicles of the St. Lawrence (Montreal, etc., 1878). 
 
 Short articles which bear more or less directly on the subject are 
 " La Tenure Seigneuriale " by Benjamin Suite, in Revue Canadienne, 
 July-August, 1882 ; "The French Canadian Peasantry" by Prosper 
 '^exvAex,\xv Magazine of American Liistory, kvigw's.'i, 1890; "Titles of 
 Honor in Canada " by J. D. Edgar, in Quarterly Review of the Univer- 
 sity of Toronto, 1891 ; " L'Ancienne Noblesse du Canada" by Benja- 
 min Suite, in Revue Canadiefine, May-September, 1885; "The Droit 
 de Banality during the French Regime in Canada" by W. B. Munro, in 
 American Historical Association, Report iox 1899 ; and "The Noblesse 
 of the Old Regime " by W. B. Munro, in Canadian Magazine, April, 
 1900. 
 
 It is not easy to understand some of the incidents of Canadian feudal- 
 ism without constant reference to the workings of the land-tenure system 
 in France during the two centuries preceding the Revolution. Bearing 
 upon this topic are a large number of exhaustive and important works. 
 The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris has on its shelves no less than six- 
 teen different commentaries on the Custom of Paris alone. Of these 
 various commentaries the following have been most serviceable : 
 Charles Dumoulin, Coutumes de la Prevote et Vicomte de Paris (Paris, 
 1 681) ; Claude Ferri^re, Corps et Compilation de tous les Commentateurs 
 Anciens et Modernes sur la Coutume de Paris (4 vols., Paris, 17 14) ; 
 Francois Bourjon, Le Droit Co7nmun de la France et la Coutume de 
 Paris reduits en Principes (2 vols., Paris, 1770). Mention should also 
 be made of the " Essai sur I'Ancienne Coutume de Paris" by H. Buche, 
 in the Nouvelle Revue Historique du Droit Fran^ais, viii. 45-86, ix. 558- 
 579, and of Henri KUmrath's Etudes stir les Coutumes (Paris, 1837). 
 Very useful works on the development of the seigniorial system in France 
 are Renauldon's Traite Historique et Pratique des Droits Seignetiriaux 
 (Paris, 1765) ; F. Boutaric's Traite des Seigneuries et des Matieres 
 Feodales (Toulouse, 1774) ; Dareste de la Chavanne's Histoire des 
 Classes Agricoles en France (Paris, 1858); Paul VioUet's Histoire
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 265 
 
 du Droit Civil Ffan^ais (Paris, 1893), and the same author's Histoire 
 des Instituti07is Politiques et Administratives de la France (3 vols., Paris, 
 1 890- 1 903); Achille Luchaire's Manuel des Institutions Fran^aises 
 (Paris, 1 892) ; Adh^mar Esmein's Cours Elementaire d'' Histoire du Droit 
 Fran^ais (Paris, 1905); Jean Brissaud's Afanuel d'' Histoire du Droit 
 Franqais (Paris, 1898 and 1904) ; and E. D. Glasson's Precis Elementaire 
 de r Histoire du Droit Frangais (Paris, 1904). On the various incidents 
 of French seigniorialism, important sources of detailed information are 
 Herv^'s Theorie des Alatieres Feodalcs et Censuelles (8 vols., Paris, 1785- 
 1788); Henrion de Pansey's Dissertations Feodales (2 vols., Paris, 
 1 789) ; Championniere's De la Fropriete des Faux Courantes (Paris, 
 1846) ; Nicholas Brussel's Nouvel Examen de P Usage General des Fiefs 
 en France (2 vols., Paris, 1727) ; and Salvaing de Boissieu's Z><? V Usage 
 des Fiefs et autres Droits Seigneuriaux (Grenoble, 1731). 
 
 The ordinances of the French kings may be found in Ordonnances des 
 Rois de France de la Troisihne Race (22 vols., Paris, 17 29-1 849), and 
 in Isambert's Recueil General des Anciennes Lois Frangaises depuis Pan 
 420 jusqu'' a la Revolution de lySg (30 vols., Paris, 1 822-1 833). 
 
 The Champlain Society of Canada has arranged for the publication, 
 in 1907, of a volume of Documents relatifig to the Seigniorial Regime. 
 This will contain, with an introduction and explanatory notes, all the 
 more important documents to which reference has been made in the 
 course of the present study.
 
 I
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PRINTED MATERIALS. 
 
 Abraham, R. Some Remarks upon the French Tenure of " Franc Aleu 
 Roturier," and on its relation to the Feudal and other Tenures. Montreal, 
 1849. 
 
 Abstract of those Parts of the Custom of the Viscounty and Provostship 
 of Paris, which were received and practised in the Province of Quebec in the 
 time of the French government ; (2) The Sequel of the Abstract . . . con- 
 taining the thirteen latter Titles of the said Abstract ; (3) An Abstract of 
 the Criminal Laws that were in force in the Province of Quebec in the time of 
 the French Government. Drawn up "by a Select Committee of Canadian 
 Gentlemen well skilled in the Laws of France and of that Province " ; (4) An 
 Abstract of the Several Royal Edicts, and Declarations, and Provincial Regu- 
 lations and Ordinances, that were in force in- the Province of Quebec in the 
 time of the French Government, and of the Commissions of the several Gov- 
 ernours-general and Intendants of the said Province, during the same Period. 
 By " Francis Joseph Cugnet, Esquire, Secretary to the Governour and Council 
 of the said Province, for the French Language." 4 parts in i vol. London, 
 1772-1773. 
 
 Angers, F. R. Resume de la Plaidoirie . . . k TAppui des Propositions 
 soumises k la Cour par le Procureur-G^neral. Montreal, 1855. 
 
 AvENEL, G. d'. Histoire Economique de la Propriete, des Salaires, des 
 Denrees, et de tons les Prix en general depuis Tan 1200 jusqu'en Pan 1800. 
 4 vols. Paris, 1 894- 1 898. 
 
 AvENEL, G. d'. Richelieu et la Monarchic Absolue. 4 vols. Paris, 1884- 
 1890. 
 
 Baby, Judge. L'Exode des Classes Dirigeantes k la Cession du Canada. 
 Montreal, 1899. 
 
 Bender, P. The French-Canadian Peasantry. Magazine of American 
 History, August, 1890, pp. 126-136. New York, 1890. 
 
 Biggar, H. p. The Early Trading Companies of New France. (Uni- 
 versity of Toronto, Studies ifi History.) Toronto, 1901. 
 
 Boissieu, D. S. de. De TUsage des Fiefs et autres Droits Seigneuriaux. 
 Grenoble, 1731. 
 
 BoucHETTE, J. British Dominions in North America. 2 vols. London, 
 1831. 
 
 BouCHETTE, J. Description Topographique de la Province du Bas- 
 Canada. London, 181 5. 
 
 BouLLJ^E, A. Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages du Chancelier d'Agues- 
 seau. 2 vols. Paris, 1835. 
 
 BOURINOT, J. G. Manual of the Constitution of Canada. Montreal, 1888. 
 
 267
 
 268 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 
 
 BOURJON, F. Le Droit Commun de la France et la Coutume de Paris 
 r^duits en Principes. 2 vols. Paris, 1770. 
 
 BouTARic, F. Traite des Seigneuries et des Matieres Feodales. Tou- 
 louse, 1774. 
 
 Bradshaw, F. Self-Government in Canada. London, 1903. 
 
 Brevets de Ratification. Quebec, 1853. 
 
 Brissaud, J. Manuel d"Histoire du Droit Fran9ais. Paris, i898-[i904]. 
 
 Brussel, N. Nouvel Examen de TUsage General des Fiefs en France. 
 2 vols. Paris, 1727. 
 
 Brymner, D. Reports on Canadian Archives. 18 vols. Ottawa, 1872- 
 1903. 
 
 BuCHE, H. Essai sur PAncienne Coutume de Paris aux xiii« et xiv® 
 Siecles. Notivelle Revue Htstorique, viii. 45-86, ix. 558-579. Paris, 1884- 
 1885. 
 
 Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries du District de Quebec, 2 vols. ; 
 Cadastres abreges des Seigneuries du District de Montreal, 3 vols. ; Cadas- 
 tres abreges des Seigneuries des Trois-Rivieres ; Cadastres abr^g^s des Seign- 
 euries appartenant k la Couronne. 7 vols. Quebec, 1836. 
 
 Canada. Statutes, 1841-1866. 16 vols. 
 
 Casgrain, H. R. Une Paroisse Canadienne au xvii*= Siecle. Quebec, 
 1880. 
 
 Cavendish, Sir Henry. Debates of the House of Commons in the Year 
 1774, on the Bill for . . . the Government of the Province of Quebec. 
 Edited by J. Wright. London, 1789. 
 
 Chalmers, G. A Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and other 
 Powers. London, 1790. 
 
 Championniere, p. L. De la Propridte des Eaux Courantes. Paris, 1846. 
 
 Chapais, T. Jean Talon, Intendant de la Nouvelle-France. Quebec, 1904. 
 
 Charlevoix, F. X. Histoire et Description General de la Nouvelle- 
 France. Edited by John Gilmary Shea. 6 vols. New York, 1866-1872. 
 
 Chauveau, P. J. O. Notice sur la Publication des Registres du Conseil 
 Souverain de Quebec. Quebec, 1885. 
 
 Cherrier, C. S. Memoire contenant un Resumd du Plaidoyer . . . sur 
 les Questions soumises a la Decision des Juges de la Cour. Montreal, 1855. 
 
 Cheyney, E. p. European Background of American History. (^The 
 American Nation : a History, Vol. I, edited by A. B. Hart.) New York, 1904. 
 
 Christie, R. A History of the Late Province of Lower Canada. 6 vols. 
 Montreal, 1866. 
 
 Clement, P. Lettres, Instructions, et Mdmoires de Colbert. 7 vols. 
 Paris, 1 861-1870. 
 
 Coffin, V. The Province of Quebec and the Early American Revolution. 
 Madison, Wisconsin, 1896. 
 
 Collection de Manuscrits contenant Lettres, Mdmoires, et autres Docu- 
 ments Historiques relatifs k la Nouvelle-France, recueillis aux archives de la 
 Province de Quebec, ou copies a I'etranger. 4 vols. Quebec, 1 883-1 885.
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 269 
 
 Correspondence between the Colonial Office and the Governors of Can- 
 ada relative to the Seigniorial and Feudal Tenure. Quebec, 1853. 
 
 Correspondence between the French Government and the Governors 
 and Intendants of Canada relative to the Seigniorial Tenure. Quebec, 1853. 
 
 CouTUME DE Paris. — See Abstract and Dumoulin. 
 
 CuGNET, F. J. Traite de la Loi des Fiefs. Quebec, 1775. 
 
 CuGNET, F. J. Traite de la Police. Quebec, 1775. 
 
 Daniel, F. Histoire des Grandes Families Fran^aises du Canada. 
 Montreal, 1867. 
 
 Dareste de la Chavanne, a. C. Histoire des Classes Agricoles en 
 France. 2d edition. Paris, 1858. 
 
 D'Avenel. See Avenel, G. d'. 
 
 David, L. O. L'Union dex Deux-Canadas. Montreal, 1898. 
 
 Debats dans TAssemblee Legislative sur la Tenure Seigneuriale. Quebec, 
 
 1853- 
 
 Dent, J. C. The Last Forty Years. 2 vols. Toronto, 1881. 
 
 Denys, N. Description Geographique et Historique des Costes de PAmd- 
 rique Septentrionale. 2 vols. Paris, 1672. 
 
 Doughty, A. G. Reports on Canadian Archives. 2 vols. Ottawa, 1904- 
 igo6. 
 
 Doutre, J., and Lareau, E. Histoire Gdndrale du Droit Civil Canadien. 
 Montreal, 1872. 
 
 DuMESNiL, C. De TAbolition des Droits Feodaux et Seigneuriaux en 
 Canada. Quebec, 1855. 
 
 Dumoulin, C. Coutumes de la Prev6td et Vicomtd de Paris. Paris, 
 1539. — New edition. Paris, 168 1. 
 
 DuNKiN, C. Address at the Bar of the Legislative Assembly of Canada 
 on behalf of certain Seigniors in Lower Canada, against the Second Reading 
 of the Bill for the Abolition of the Seigniorial Tenure. Quebec, 1853. 
 
 DuNKiN, C. Case of the Seigniors of Lower Canada. Montreal, 1855. 
 
 Durham, Earl of. Report on the Affairs of British North America; 
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 don, 1900. 
 
 Edgar, J. D. Titles of Honor in Canada. University Quarterly Review, 
 February, 1890, pp. 98-104. Toronto, 1890. 
 
 Edicts, Ordinances, Declarations, and Decrees relative to the Seigniorial 
 Tenure. Quebec, 1852. 
 
 Edits, Ordonnances Royaux, Declarations, et Arrets du Conseil d'Etat 
 du Roi concernant le Canada. 2 vols. Quebec, 1803-1806. — New edition, 
 enlarged and improved. 3 vols. Quebec, 1854-1856. 
 
 EsMEiN, A. Cours El^mentaire d'Histoire du Droit Franc^ais. Paris, 1905. 
 
 Faillon, M. E. Histoire de la Colonie Franc^aise en Canada. 3 vols. 
 Ville-Marie, 1 865-1 866. 
 
 Ferland, J. B. A. Cours d'Histoire du Canada. 2 vols. Quebec, 1861- 
 1865.
 
 270 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 
 
 Ferriere, Claude. Corps et Compilation de tout les Commentateurs 
 Anciens et Modernes sur la Coutume de Paris. 4 vols. Paris, 1714. 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges, N. D. La Justice dans la Socidt^ Feodale. Revue 
 des Dejix Mondes, xcii. 274-298. Paris, 1871. 
 
 Garneau, F. X. Histoire du Canada. 4 vols. Montreal, 1 882-1 883. 
 
 Gaspe, p. a. de. Les Anciens Canadiens. Quebec, 1863. 
 
 Gatien, F. X. Histoire de la Paroisse du Cap-Sante. Quebec, 1884. 
 
 Glasson, E. D. Precis Elementaire de THistoire du Droit Fran9ais. 
 Paris, 1904. 
 
 GosSELiN, A. Les Normands au Canada : Jean Bourdon et son ami 
 I'Abbe de Saint-Sauveur. Quebec, 1904. 
 
 GossELiN, A. Vie de Mgr. de Laval, premier Eveque de Quebec et Apotre 
 du Canada. 2 vols. Quebec, 1890. 
 
 Grande Encyclopedie. 31 vols. Paris, 1 886-1 900. 
 
 Gravier, G. Cavelier de la Salle de Rouen. Paris, 1871. 
 
 Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers. Papers relating to Lands in 
 Canada. London, 1837. 
 
 Greenough, W. p. Canadian Folk-Life and Folk-Lore. New York, 1897. 
 
 Hakluyt, R. a Discourse on Western Planting, written in 1584. (Maine 
 Historical Society, Collections, 2d series, vol. ii.) Cambridge, 1877. 
 
 Hallam, H. View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. 
 London, 1846. 
 
 Harrisse, H. Notes pour servir k THistoire . . . de la Nouvelle-France. 
 Paris, 1872. 
 
 Head, Sir F. B. The Emigrant. London, 1847. 
 
 Henrion de Pansey, p. p. N. Dissertations F^odales. 2 vols. Paris, 
 T789. 
 
 Heriot, G. Travels through the Canadas. London, 1807. 
 
 Herve, M. T. Theorie des Matieres Feodales et Censuelles. 8 vols. 
 Paris, 1 785-1 788. 
 
 Hincks, Sir F. Reminiscences of his Public Life. Montreal, 1884. 
 
 [Hincks, Sir F.] The Seigniorial Question ; its Present Position. By a 
 Member of the Legislative Assembly from Upper Canada. Quebec, 1854. 
 
 Hopkins, J. C, editor. Canada : an Encyclopedia of the Country. 5 vols. 
 Toronto, 1 898-1 900. 
 
 Houston, W. Documents Illustrative of the Canadian Constitution. 
 Toronto, 1891. 
 
 Isambert, F. a. Recueil General des Anciennes Lois Franqaises depuis 
 Tan 420 jusqu'a la Revolution de 1789. 30 vols. Paris, 1 822-1 833. 
 
 Jean-Baptiste, Le Frere de. Paie, Pauvre Peuple, Paie! Quebec, 
 1855. 
 
 JODOiN, A., and Vincent, J. L. Histoire de Longueuil et de la Famille 
 de Longueuil. Montreal, 1889. 
 
 Johnson, G. A Summary of the Censuses of Canada, 1665-1871. Ottawa, 
 1876.
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 27 1 
 
 Journals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada, 1792-1837. 53 
 vols. 
 
 Journals of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada, 1792-1837. 25 
 vols. 
 
 Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, 1841-1866. 48 vols. 
 
 Journals of the Legislative Council of Canada, 1 841-1866. 44 vols. 
 
 JuGEMENTS et Deliberations du Conseil Souverain de la Nouvelle-France. 
 6 vols. Quebec, 1 885-1 891. — In Vol. V the title is changed to " Jugements 
 et Deliberations du Conseil Superieur de Quebec." 
 
 Kalm, p. Travels into North America. 2 vols. London, 1772. 
 
 KiERKOWSKi, A. The Question of the Seigniorial Tenure in Lower Can- 
 ada reduced to a Question of Landed Credit. Quebec, 1850. 
 
 KiNGSFORD, W. History of Canada. 10 vols. Toronto, 1887-1898. 
 
 KiRBY, W. The Chien d'Or : The Golden Dog, a Legend of Quebec. 
 New York, etc., 1877. 
 
 KiRKE, H. The First English Conquest of Canada. London, 1871. 
 
 Klimrath, H. Etudes sur les Coutumes. Paris, 1837. 
 
 Lafontaine, Sir L. H. Observations. Printed in Lower Canada Re- 
 ports: Seigniorial Questions, vol. i. Quebec, 1856. 
 
 Lahontan (or La Hontan), Le Baron de. Nouveaux Voyages. 2 vols. 
 The Hague, 1705, and many subsequent editions. — See also Thwaites, 
 R. G. 
 
 Lambert, J. Travels through Canada. 3 vols. London, 18 14. 
 
 Lareau, E. Histoire du Droit Canadien, depuis les Origines de la Colonie 
 jusqu'k nos jours. 2 vols. Montreal, 1888-1889. 
 
 Lareau, E. Melanges Historiques et Litteraires. Montreal, 1871. 
 
 Larochefoucault-Liancourt, F. a. F. de. Travels in the United 
 States . . . with an authentic account of Lower Canada. 4 vols. London, 
 1803. 
 
 Laveleye, E. de. De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives. Paris, 
 1874. 
 
 Le Blanc (or Leblanc), F. Traitd Historique des Monnoyes de France. 
 Amsterdam, 1692. 
 
 Le Moine, J. M. Chronicles of the St. Lawrence. Montreal, etc., 1878. 
 
 Le Moine, J. M. Maple Leaves. 7 series. Quebec, 1863- 1906. 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, p. De la Colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes. 2 
 vols. Paris, 1902. 
 
 Lescarbot, M. Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. Edited by E. Tross. 
 3 vols. Paris, 1866. 
 
 Lindsey, C. The Life and Times of WilHam Lyon Mackenzie. 2 vols. 
 Toronto, 1863. 
 
 LoiSEL, A. Institutes Coutumi^res. Paris, 1688. 
 
 Loranger, T. J. J. Mdmoire compose de la Plaidoirie . . . devant la 
 Cour Seigneuriale. Montreal, 1855. 
 
 LoRiN, H. Le Comte de Frontenac. Paris, 1895.
 
 2/2 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 
 
 Lower Canada Reports. Decisions des Tribunaux du Bas-Canada : 
 Seigniorial Questions. Edited by Messrs. Lelievre and Angers. 3 vols. 
 Quebec, etc., 1856. 
 
 LuCHAiRE, A. Manuel des Institutions Fran^aises. Paris, 1892. 
 
 Mackay, R. The Case in Part of the Seigniors of Lower Canada. 
 Montreal, 1855. 
 
 McCarthy, J. Dictionnaire de I'Ancien Droit du Canada. Quebec, 
 1809. 
 
 Maitland, F. W. Domesday Book and Beyond. London, 1897. 
 
 Mandements, Lettres Pastorales, et Circulaires des Eveques de Quebec. 
 Edited by Messrs. H. Tetu and C. O. Gagnon. 6 vols. Quebec, 1 887-1 890. 
 
 Manesse, L. Les Paysans et leurs Seigneurs avant 1789. Paris, 1895. 
 
 Margry, p. Decouvertes et Etablissements des Fran9ais dans TOuest. 
 6 vols. Paris, 1 879-1 888. 
 
 Margry, P. Relations et Memoires inedits, pour servir k I'Histoire de la 
 France dans les Pays d'Outre Mer, tires des archives du Ministere de la 
 Marine et des Colonies. Paris, 1865. 
 
 Marie de l'Incarnation, Mere. Lettres Historiques. Paris, 1857. 
 
 Marriott, J. A Plan of a Code of Laws for the Province of Quebec. 
 London, 1774. 
 
 Martin, J. Travels in Canada. London, 1824. 
 
 Maseres, F. An Account of the Proceedings of the British and other 
 Inhabitants of Quebec. London, 1775. 
 
 Maseres, F. Additional Papers concerning the Province of Quebec. 
 Quebec, 1776. 
 
 Maseres, F. A Collection of several Commissions and other Public In- 
 struments . . . relating to the State of the Province of Quebec. London, 
 1772. 
 
 Maseres, F. Draught of an Act of Parliament for settling the Laws of the 
 Province of Quebec. London, [1771]. 
 
 Montesquieu, Baron de. The Spirit of Laws. Translated by Thomas 
 Nugent. London, 1897. 
 
 MONTIGNY, B. A. Testard DE. Histoire du Droit Canadien. Montreal, 
 1869. 
 
 Montreal Convention. La Convention Anti-Seigneuriale de Montreal. 
 Montreal, 1854. 
 
 MoREAU DE St. Mery, M. L. Lois et Constitutions des Colonies Fran- 
 9aises de TAmerique. 6 vols. Paris, 1 784-1 790. 
 
 MOYAT, L. Etude Historique, Critique, et Comparee sur le Droit de Chasse. 
 Paris, 1900. 
 
 MuNRO, W. B. The Droit de Banalite during the French Regime in 
 Canada. American Historical Association,/?^/)?;-/, 1899, i. 205-228. Wash- 
 ington, 1900. 
 
 MuNRO, W. B. The Noblesse of the Old Regime. Canadian Magazine, 
 April, 1900, pp. 568-573. Toronto, 1900.
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 273 
 
 MuNRO, W. B. The Office of Intendant in New France. American 
 Historical Review, October, 1906, pp. 15-38. New York, 1906. 
 
 New York. Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York. 
 Edited by O'Callaghan and Fernow. 15 vols. New York, 1853-1883. 
 
 NouvELLE Revue Historique du Droit Fran9ais. 29 vols. Paris, 
 1877-1905. 
 
 Ordinances made for the Province of Quebec by the Governor and Coun- 
 cil since the Establishment of Civil Government. Quebec, 1767. 
 
 Ordinances made and passed by the Governor and Legislative Council of 
 the Province of Quebec, and now in force in the Province of Lower Canada. 
 Quebec, 1792. 
 
 Ordonnances des Rois de France de la Troisieme Race. 22 vols. Paris, 
 I 729-1 849. 
 
 Parkman, F. Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. 
 Frontenac edition. Boston, 1901. 
 
 Parkman, F. The Old R(igime in Canada. 2 vols. Boston, 1901. 
 
 Parkman, F. The Pioneers of France in the New World. 2 vols. 
 Boston, 1901. 
 
 Perrault, J. F. Extraits ou Precedents, tires des Registres de la Pre- 
 voste de Quebec. Quebec, 1824. 
 
 Perwich, W. The Despatches of William Perwich, English agent in 
 Paris, 1669-1677. [Camden Society, Piiblicatiotis, 3d series, vol. v.] Lon- 
 don, 1903. 
 
 Pieces et Documents relatifs k la Tenure Seigneuriale. 2 vols. Quebec, 
 1 852-1 854. — See also Titles and Documents. 
 
 Pigeonneau, H. La Politique Coloniale de Colbert. Annales de VEcole 
 Libre des Sciences Poliiiqnes, i. 487-509. Paris, 1886. 
 
 Proceedings of the Special Court held under the authority of the Seign- 
 iorial Act of 1854. Quebec, 1856. 
 
 Quelques Avis d'un Cultivateur aux Censitaires du Bas-Canada au sujet 
 de la Loi d'Abolition de la Tenure Seigneuriale. Quebec, 1855. 
 
 [Rambau, a. X.] Le Bill Seigneurial expose sous son Vrai Jour par le 
 Journal "La Patrie." Montreal, 1855. 
 
 Rameau de St. Pere, E. Une Colonic F^odale en Amdrique. 2 vols. 
 Paris and Montreal, 1889. 
 
 Rapport du Ministre des Travaux Publics de la Province de Quebec. 
 Quebec, 1899. 
 
 Read, D. B. The Rebellion of 1837. Toronto, 1896. 
 
 Regne Militaire en Canada, ou Administration Judiciaire de ce Pays par 
 les Anglais du 8 Septembre, 1760, au 10 AoCit, 1764. (Montreal Historical 
 Society, Pttblications.) Montreal, 1872. 
 
 Renauldon, J. Traite Historique et Pratique des Droits Seigneuriaux. 
 Paris, 1765. 
 
 Report of the Commissioners on the Grievances complained of in Lower 
 Canada. London, 1837.
 
 274 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 
 
 Report of the Committee on the Affairs of Lower Canada ; with Evidence. 
 London, 1834-1837. 
 
 Report of the Committee on the State of the Civil Government of Can- 
 ada. London, 1828. 
 
 Reports. — See Lov^^er Canada Reports. 
 
 Richardson, J. Eight Years in Canada. Montreal, 1847. 
 
 RiouFOL, M. L'Origine et I'Histoire des BanaHtes. Paris, 1893. 
 
 Rochemonteix, C. de. Les Je'suites et la Nouvelle-France au xvii™^ 
 Siecle. 3 vols. Paris, 1 895-1 896. 
 
 Roy, J. E. Histoire de la Seigneurie de Lauzon. 5 vols. Montreal, 1897- 
 1904. 
 
 Roy, R. Les Intendants de la Nouvelle-France. Royal Society of 
 Canada, Proceedings, 1903, Mevioires, sec. i. 65-75. Ottawa, 1903. 
 
 Royal Society of Canada. Proceedings. First series, 1 1 vols., Ottawa^ 
 1882-1894. Second series, 11 vols., Ottawa, 1895-1906. 
 
 Sagard, G. Histoire du Canada. Edited by E. Tross. 4 vols. Paris, 
 1865-1866. 
 
 Sansom, J. Sketches of Lower Canada. New York, 181 7. 
 
 Sargent, A. J. The Economic Policy of Colbert. (London School of 
 Economics, Studies in Economics and Political Science, No. 5.) London, 1899. 
 
 Sellar, R. History of Huntingdon, Chateauguay, and Beauhamois. 
 Huntingdon, Quebec, 1888. 
 
 Smith, W. History of Canada. 2 vols. Quebec, 1815. 
 
 Sulte, B. L'Ancienne Noblesse du Canada. Revue Canadienne, May- 
 September, 1885, pp. lo/i-iyi^ passim. Montreal, 1885. 
 
 Sulte, B. Chronique Trifluvienne. Montreal, 1879. 
 
 Sulte, B. Histoire des Canadiens-Fran(;:ais. 8 vols. Montreal, 1 882-1 884. 
 
 Sulte, B. La Guerre des Iroquois. Royal Society of Canada, Proceed- 
 ings, 1897, Memoir es, sec. i. 65-92. Ottawa, 1897. 
 
 Sulte, B. Le Regime Militaire, 1 760-1 764. Ibid. 1905, Appendix A. 
 Ottawa, 1906. 
 
 Sulte, B. Le Regiment de Carignan. Ibid. 1902, Memoires, s&c. i. 25-95. 
 Ottawa, 1902. 
 
 Sulte, B. La Tenure Seigneuriale. Revue Canadienne, July-August, 
 1882, pp. 437-462 /«ji-/w. Montreal, 1882. 
 
 Tache, J. C. A Plan for the Commutation of the Seigniorial Tenure. 
 Quebec, 1854. 
 
 Taine, H. a. Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, Vol. I : L'Ancien 
 Regime. Paris, 1876. 
 
 Tanguay, C. Dictionnaire Genealogique des Families Canadiennes depuis 
 la Fondation de la Colonie jusqu'k nos jours. 7 vols. Montreal, 1871-1890. 
 
 Tanguay, C. Repertoire General du Clerge Canadien. Quebec, 1868. 
 
 Theller, E. a. Canada in 1837-1838. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1841. 
 
 Thwaites, R. G., editor. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 
 73 vols. Cleveland, 1 896- 1 90 1.
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST. 2/5 
 
 Thwaites, R. G., editor. Lahontan's New Voyages to North America. 
 2 vols. Chicago, 1905. 
 
 Titles and Documents relating to the Seigniorial Tenure. 2 vols. 
 Quebec, 1 852-1 854. 
 
 TiTRES DES Seigneuries. — Vol. II of Pieces et Documents. 
 
 ToCQUEViLLE, A. DE. The Old Regime and the Revolution. Translated 
 from the French by J. Bonner. New York, 1856. 
 
 Troisieme Rapport et Deliberations du Comite Special de TAssemblee 
 Legislative. Quebec, 1851. 
 
 TuRCOTTE, L. P. Le Canada sous TUnion. 2 vols. Quebec, 1871-1872. 
 
 ViOLLET, P. Histoire du Droit Civil Fran9ais. Paris, 1893. 
 
 ViOLLET, P. Histoire des Institutions Politiques et Administratives de la 
 France. 3 vols. Paris, 1890-1903. 
 
 Weir, R. S. The Administration of the Old Regime in Canada. Mon- 
 treal, 1897.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abraham, Pierre, carpenter, sent to the 
 seigniories to look for timber, 137. 
 
 Abraham, Robert, on the nature of tenure 
 en franc aleu roturier, 53; on the droit de 
 retrait, 99. 
 
 Absenteeism, evil of, in France, 12. 
 
 Abuses, seigniorial, in France, 12; appear 
 in Canada, 39; reported by Raudot, 
 39-40; reform of, considered by min- 
 ister, 41-42; provisions in Arrets of 
 Marly relating to, 42-44; discussed by 
 Beauharnois and Hocquart, 47-48; in 
 exercise of the droit de retrait, 97-98; 
 instructions of Pontchartrain for remedy 
 of, 98; in exercise of banal rights in 
 France, 102; enforcement of mill banal- 
 ity in Canada, 104-105; continuance of, 
 permitted by non-publication of royal 
 decree, 106-107; connected with inef- 
 ficiency of banal mills, 111-115; in- 
 crease of, after the British conquest, 1 21, 
 206-207 ; connected with right of oven 
 banality, 122-124; i" exaction of cor- 
 vees, 1 28-130; attempted reform of, 
 128—129; in matter of reservations, 
 134-139; opinions of Special Court 
 on, 137-140; in matter of prohibitions, 
 140; protection of habitants against, 
 by the intendant, 143; in seigniorial 
 courts, 155-157; Carleton's opinion on, 
 
 157- 
 
 Act, Quebec (1774), 209-219; Judicature 
 (1793), 219; Constitutional (1791), 221 ; 
 Canada Trade (1822), 223-224; Canada 
 Trade and Tenures (1825), 225-226; 
 Canada (1840), 239; for optional com- 
 mutation of tenures ( 1 845 ), 242 ; for abo- 
 lition of the seigniorial tenure (1854), 
 244-245; Jesuits' Estates (1888), 250. 
 
 Advowson, seigniorial right of, 185; en- 
 deavor of Laval and of St. Vallier to 
 limit, 185; opinion of Duchesneau 
 
 277 
 
 regarding, 185; restricted by royal 
 arret, 185. 
 Agriculture, progress of (1608- 1627), 
 20-22; under Company of One Hun- 
 dred Associates, 26-27; difficulties of, 
 in New France, 28; apathy of Com- 
 pany of the West Indies in develop- 
 ment of, 32-33; methods of, described 
 by Catalogne, 45-47; neglected during 
 the closing years of the old regime, 51, 
 188; effect of subdivision of lands on, 
 83-84; relation of seigniorial mills to, 
 125-126; state of, under British rule, 
 
 235. 237- 
 
 Aguesseau, Henri-Fran5ois d'. See Da- 
 guesseau. 
 
 Ailleboust. See D'Ailleboust. 
 
 Atnesse, droit d', recognized in succes- 
 sions to seigniories, 82. 
 
 Amherst, General Jeffrey, signs articles 
 of capitulation, 189; organizes system 
 of military government, 190. 
 
 Amiot, Charles, seignior of Vincelotte, 
 establishes a banal oven, 121 ; is granted 
 letters of noblesse, 172. 
 
 Amortisement, of seigniories owned by 
 Jesuits, 53; of lands held by other reli- 
 gious bodies, 53. 
 
 Arpent, definition of, 24. 
 
 Arret, of Marly (1711), 42-44; of Ver- 
 sailles (1732), 49; draft of an, for re- 
 form of seigniorial abuses (171 7), 128, 
 
 135- 
 
 Arriere-fiefs, number of, 77; obligations 
 imposed upon holders of, 77; reasons 
 for making grants of, 79; provisions in 
 act of 1854 relating to, 245. 
 
 Associates. See Company of One Hundred 
 Associates. 
 
 Aubert, Charles, Sieur de la Chesnaye, 
 purchases " marquisat de Sable," 170. 
 
 Auteuil. See D'Autcuil.
 
 2/8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Aveu et denombrement, made by seign- 
 iors, 57; its nature and scope, 57-58; 
 its value to the colonial authorities, 58; 
 in case of arriere-fiefs, 77. 
 
 Aylmer, Lord, governor of Canada (1831- 
 1835), recommendations concerning the 
 seigniorial tenure, 227-228. 
 
 Baby, Judge, on exodus of French-Cana- 
 dians after the British conquest, 192. 
 
 Bagot, Sir Charles, governor of Canada 
 (1842-1843), appoints commission to 
 study seigniorial problem, 239. 
 
 Bailiffs, seigniorial, in France, 12. 
 
 Ban, feudal, in France, 65. 
 
 Banal mills. See Banality, Mills. 
 
 Banality, forms of, in France, 4, loi; 
 Henrion de Pansey on, loi ; origin of, 
 I0I-I02; provisions of Custom of 
 Paris relating to, 102; narrow scope 
 of the obligation in Canada, 102-103; 
 official regulation of, 105-108; Raudot 
 on restriction of, 106—108; differences 
 between the obligation in France and 
 in Canada, III; applied to ovens, 121 ; 
 no vested right of, in Canada, 124; 
 Parkman on burden of, 125; Gold win 
 Smith on non-enforcement of the obli- 
 gation, 125; relation of the right to 
 agriculture, 126; minor forms in Can- 
 ada, 142; obligation abolished by act 
 of 1854, 247; opinion of the Special 
 Court on the legal basis of, 249. See 
 also Mills, Ovens. 
 
 Baronies, authority to create, given to 
 La Roche, 161; to Company of One 
 Hundred Associates, 161- 162; number 
 of, in Canada and Acadia, 166. See 
 also Cap Tourmente, Des Islets, Lon- 
 gueuil, Pobomcoup, Portneuf. 
 
 Barroys. See Le Barroys. 
 
 Basse justice. See Justice (seigniorial). 
 
 Batiscan, seigniory of, seigniorial judges 
 in, ordered to hold regular sessions, 156. 
 
 Beaches, to be left free for fishermen, 75; 
 seigniorial reservation of, 138; method 
 of fishing on tidal, described by Kalm, 
 138. 
 
 Beauharnois, Charles, Marquis de, gov- 
 ernor of New France (i 726-1 747), 
 discusses seigniorial abuses, 47-48; calls 
 attention to subdivision of lands, 84. 
 
 Beaumont, seigniory of, given to Charles 
 Couillard de Beaumont (1713), 44; 
 conditions in title-deed of, 59; inter- 
 pretations of banal obligations in, 119, 
 
 Beauport, seigniory of, granted to Robert 
 Giffard (1634), 25; augmentation of 
 (1653), 25; terms in title-deed of, 
 64. ^ 
 
 Beaupre, seigniory of, population in 1667, 
 186. 
 
 Becancour, seigniory of, wrongly termed 
 a barony, 167. See also Robineau. 
 
 Begon, Michel, intendant of New France 
 (1710-1724), judgment on the droit 
 de retrait, 99; ordinance regarding 
 banal rights, 117; on the exaction of 
 corvee labor, 129; forbids future stipu- 
 lations for corvees, 130; on the nature 
 of seigniorial reservations, 135; counsels 
 creation of parishes, 182. 
 
 Beloeil, seigniory of, given to Lemoyne de 
 Longueuil (i 713), 44, 
 
 Berthelot, Frangois, seignior of Isle Jesus, 
 165 ; exchanges seigniories with Laval, 
 165 ; becomes Comte de St. Laurent, 
 165 ; commended to the royal favor by 
 Talon, 166. 
 
 Berthier, seigniory of, enforcement of 
 royal reservation of timber in, 136. 
 
 Berthier, Alexandre, officer in the Carig- 
 nan regiment, becomes owner of a 
 seigniory, 70. 
 
 Bienville. See Lemoyne de Bienville. 
 
 Bigot, Francois, intendant of New France 
 ( 1 748-1 760), orders demolition of 
 buildings erected by habitants, 84. 
 
 Blairie. See Droit de blairie. 
 
 Bouchard. See Isles Bouchard. 
 
 Boucher, seigniory of, granted without 
 judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Boucher, Pierre, sent to France to present 
 colonial grievances, 26 ; given rank in 
 the noblesse, 171 ; patent revoked, 
 171 ; restored to rank, 172. 
 
 Boucher de la Perriere, leader in the 
 Haverhill raid, 176. 
 
 Bouchette, Joseph, on characteristics of 
 the Norman settler in Canada, 153. 
 
 Boundaries, of seigniories, how deter- 
 mined, 55 ; to be set forth in the aveu 
 et denombrement, 57 ; within seignior- 
 ies to be delimited by seigniors who had
 
 INDEX. 
 
 279 
 
 middle jurisdiction, 150 ; frequent dis- 
 putes among habitants regarding, 153. 
 
 Bourdon, Jean, surveyor-general of New 
 France, credited with origin of oblong 
 grants, 80 ; his map of the seigniories, 
 80 ; as attorney-general supervises ad- 
 ministration of seigniorial justice, 156 ; 
 commended to the king for ennoble- 
 ment, 172. 
 
 Bourinot, Sir John George, on the guar- 
 antees contained in the capitulation of 
 1760, 190. 
 
 British American Land Company. ^5"^^ 
 Company. 
 
 Cadillac. See Lamotte-Cadillac. 
 
 Caen, Guillaume de, given Cap Tour- 
 mente (1624), 21; created baron of Cap 
 Tourmente, 166. 
 
 Capitaine de la milice, local agent of 
 central authorities, 43 ; position and 
 powers of, 43 ; specific duties of, 43, 
 73 ; supervises exaction of royal cor- 
 vees, 133. 
 
 Capitulation of Montreal, signed by 
 Vaudreuil and Amherst, 189 ; terms 
 of, 189; guarantees of proprietary 
 rights in, 189-190; confirmed by the 
 Treaty of Paris, 191. 
 
 Cap Tourmente, granted to Guillaume 
 de Caen (1624), 21 ; made a barony, 
 166. 
 
 Card money, seigniorial dues payable in, 
 92; depreciation of, 188. 
 
 Carignan-Salieres regiment sent to Can- 
 ada, T^T) ; several companies disbanded 
 in colony, 36 ; previous history in 
 France, 67 ; project of Talon with ref- 
 erence to, 68 ; officers receive seignior- 
 ies along the Richelieu, 69-70; grant of 
 monetary assistance to non-commis- 
 sioned officers and men, 70; provided 
 with wives, 72 ; effect of settlement in 
 colony, 72 ; former members assist in 
 construction of Fort Frontenac, 73. 
 
 Carleton, Guy, governor of Canada (1768- 
 1778, 1786-1796), views on seign- 
 iorial obligation of military service, 66 ; 
 on seigniorial justice, 151,157; assumes 
 governorship, 196 ; investigates legal 
 situation in the colony, 198 ; orders 
 compilation of French law, 198-199; 
 
 views on legal needs of Canada, 199— 
 200 ; proposes ordinance for reform 
 of legal system, 200-201 ; recommen- 
 dations to Shelburne, 201 ; opinion of 
 Maseres, 202 ; goes to England, 203 ; 
 secures partial adoption of recommen- 
 dations, 203-204 ; resumes duties in 
 Canada, 211. 
 
 Caron, Judge, on extent of the right of 
 mill banality, 1 18. 
 
 Cartier, Jacques, expeditions to New 
 France (i534-i535). I7- 
 
 Casgrain, Abbe H. R., on method of pay- 
 ing seigniorial dues, 95 ; on relation 
 between the seigniory and the parish, 
 183. 
 
 Catalogne, Gedeon de, engineer, report 
 on state of seigniories (1712), 45-47 ; 
 on ownership of fiefs in Canada, 46 ; 
 on influence of the church, 46-47 ; on 
 seigniorial justices, 152; on seigniorial 
 cures, 182; superior management of 
 church fiefs noted by, 182. 
 
 Cens, definition of, 85 ; origin of, 85-86 ; 
 Herve on origin of, 86 ; Henrion de 
 Pansey on origin of, 87 ; amount of, in 
 France, 87 ; Bourjon on rate in France, 
 87 ; rate not fixed in Canada prior to 
 171 1, 88 ; desire of Raudot for uniform 
 rate, 89 ; relation of Arret of Marly to 
 rate, 89-90 ; common belief in uniform- 
 ity of rate, 90 ; Hocquart's attitude re- 
 garding rate, 90-91 ; absence of uniform 
 rate in royal grants, 92 ; payable in coin 
 at a discount, 92-93 ; abolition of, 247 ; 
 opinion of the Special Court in regard 
 to rate, 249. 
 
 Cens et rentes, in France, 4 ; how and 
 when payable in Canada, 95 ; Casgrain 
 on payment of, 95 ; date and place of 
 payment strictly interpreted, 95. See 
 also Cens, Rentes. 
 
 Censitaires. See Habitants. 
 
 Census, of 1734, 49; of 1739. 85; of 
 1720, 108 ; of 1681, 166; of 1667, 188. 
 
 Centralization, administrative, in France, 
 13 ; in Canada, 15. 
 
 Chambly, seigniory of, restriction of 
 seigniorial reservations in, 135. 
 
 Chambly, Philippe de, officer in the 
 Carignan regiment, receives a seign- 
 iory, 70.
 
 280 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Champigny, Jean Bochart de, intendant 
 of New France (i 686-1 702), asks that 
 Longueuil be made a barony, 168; on 
 poverty of the noblesse, 173-175 ; im- 
 plores the king to give no more patents, 
 
 175- 
 
 Championniere, A., on banal abuses in 
 France, 102. 
 
 Champlain, seigniory of, banal obligation 
 in, 117 ; seigniorial judges of, ordered 
 to hold weekly sessions, 156. 
 
 Champlain, Samuel, voyages to the St. 
 Lawrence, 20 ; founder of Quebec, 20; 
 his powers, 20-21 ; advises seigniorial 
 grants, 21 ; issues ordinances, 145 ; 
 establishes first court at Quebec, 145. 
 
 Chapais, Thomas, on growth of population 
 in New France (1669-1673), 72 ; on 
 the life and work of Talon, 165. 
 
 Charles VIII, king of France (1483-1498), 
 codification of the coutumes during the 
 reign of, 7. 
 
 Charlesbourg, granted to the Jesuits en 
 franc aleu noble (1637), 52. 
 
 Charlevoix, F. X., on powers of the 
 Company of the West Indies, 32. 
 
 Charter, of La Roche, 18-19 > of Com- 
 pany of One Hundred Associates, 22- 
 24 ; revocation of, 27 ; of Company of 
 the West Indies, 30-32 ; revocation of, 
 
 37- 
 
 Chasse, See Droit de chasse. 
 
 Chatellenie. See Coulonge. 
 
 Chavigny, Francois de, seignior of La 
 Chevrotiere, seeks enforcement of 
 corvee obligation, 130. 
 
 Cheruel, A., on gradations of the noblesse 
 in France, 170. 
 
 Chesnaye. See Aubert. 
 
 Church, the, its relation to Canadian 
 feudalism, 178 ; support given by, to 
 agriculture, 179 ; lands controlled by, 
 180-181 ; superior management of 
 seigniories by, 186; influence in France 
 and in Canada, 187-188; dislikes new 
 settlers, 234 ; attitude toward Jesuits' 
 Estates, 250. See also Jesuits, RecoUets, 
 Sulpitians, Ursulines. 
 
 Churches, sometimes erected by corvee 
 labor, 131 ; reservation of sites for, 
 139; right of seigniors to places of 
 honor in, 161 ; methods of erection, 
 
 184; refusal of Laval to consecrate, 
 185 ; right of advowson in seigniorial, 
 185-186. 
 
 Clergy Reserves, question of, 222-223, 
 224 ; prominence of, in elections of 
 1854, 245 ; secularization of, 245. 
 
 Colbert, Jean Baptiste, his interest in 
 affairs of New France, 14 ; organizes 
 Company of the West Indies, 30 ; ap- 
 proves Talon's scheme of military colo- 
 nization, 69 ; secures revocation of 
 patents of noblesse, 171. 
 
 Colombier. See Droit de colombier. 
 
 Commissioners of 1843, opinion in regard 
 to corvees, 133; report of, 207; to be 
 appointed to value seigniorial rights, 
 245-247. 
 
 Company, British American Land, or- 
 ganized to develop lands in Quebec, 
 
 234- 
 
 Company of New France. See Company 
 of One Hundred Associates. 
 
 Company of One Hundred Associates, or- 
 ganized by Richelieu, 22; its powers, 
 23; its organization, 24; encounters dif- 
 ficulties, 24; seigniorial grants made by, 
 25; exploits fur trade, 26; surrenders its 
 privileges, 27; grants lands subject to 
 French Vexin, 63 ; conditions relat- 
 ing to land grants in its charter, 88; 
 empowered to grant titles of honor, 
 161-162. 
 
 Company of the West Indies, organized 
 under auspices of Colbert, 30; its exten- 
 sive powers, 31 ; its prerogatives in law 
 and in fact, 31-32; exploits fur trade, 
 32-33; sends agent to Canada, 32; 
 makes few land grants, 33-34 ; its 
 charter revoked, 37; its heavy losses, 
 
 37- 
 
 Compensation, not granted for loss of ju- 
 dicial powers, 1 58; given to seigniors 
 upon abolition of seigniorial tenure, 
 247-248; considered inadequate by 
 seigniors, 251. 
 
 ContreccEur, Antoine Pecody de, officer of 
 the Carignan-Salieres, becomes a seign- 
 ior, 70. 
 
 Copyhold, tenure in, confused with tenure 
 en censive, 205-206. 
 
 Corvee, exaction, in France, 5, 127; 
 provisions of Custom of Paris relating
 
 INDEX. 
 
 281 
 
 to, 127; abuses in Canada, 128-130; 
 exaction restricted, 129-130; futurestip- 
 ulations of, forbidden, 1 30-1 31 ; super- 
 vision of, 133; amount of, 133-134; 
 commutation of, 133; "king's corvee," 
 nature of, 132-133 ; exaction after the 
 conquest, 133. 
 
 Cote de Lauzon, habitants of, ordered to 
 pay dues into royal treasury, 30. 
 
 Couillard de Beaumont, Charles, obtains 
 seigniory of Beaumont (1713), 44 ; rec- 
 ommended for rank in the noblesse, 
 172. 
 
 Coulonge, chatellenie of, given to Louis 
 d'Ailleboust (1656), 169-170. 
 
 Council, Old (I'ancien conseil), estab- 
 lished at Quebec, 146; jurisdiction of, 
 146; registers of, not preserved, 146; 
 replaced by Sovereign Council, 154- 
 
 155- 
 
 Council, Royal. See Council of State. 
 
 Council, Sovereign, appeals from, carried 
 to Council of State, 14; established at 
 Quebec (1663), 29; procedure to follow 
 Parliament of Paris, 29; issues decree 
 revoking land grants, 29-30; relation 
 to Company of the West Indies, 32 ; 
 delays promulgation of royal decree, 
 38; duty in registering royal arrets, 
 65; judgment relating to payment of 
 lods et ventes, 96; decree regarding 
 banal mills, 103; forbids exaction of 
 more than legal rate of toll, 105 ; police 
 regulations issued by, 105; orders pro- 
 mulgation of royal orders, 106; mem- 
 bers mostly seigniors, 107; considers 
 petition of Morin, 109; hears appeal 
 from the Prevote, 1 12; considers com- 
 plaints regarding mills, 1 13; confirms 
 appointment of seigniorial judges, 151; 
 hears appeals from royal courts, 153; 
 forbidden to consider appeals from seign- 
 iorial jurisdictions, 154; suppresses 
 seigniorial jurisdiction in Sillery, 154; 
 orders collections of tithes, 183; pre- 
 vents extension of tithe obligations, 
 184. 
 
 Council, Superior. See Council (Sover- 
 eign). 
 
 Council, of the Regent, in France, adopts 
 minute on colonial corvees, 128. 
 
 Council of State (conseil d'etat du roi), 
 
 hears appeals from Sovereign Council, 
 14. 
 
 Countships. See Orsainville, St. Laurent. 
 
 Courcelle, Daniel de Remy de, governor 
 of New France (1665-1672), accepts 
 proposals of Le Barroys, 34; makes in- 
 formal grant to Jean Lemoyne, 35. 
 
 Courts, royal. See Justice (administra- 
 tion of). 
 
 Coutume de Normandy, compilation of, 
 10. 
 
 Coutume de Paris. See Custom of Paris. 
 
 Coutumes, codification of, in France, 7; 
 frequent revisions of, 1 1 ; English 
 judges mistake nature of, 205-206. 
 
 Cramahe, Hon. Hector T., lieutenant- 
 governor of Canada (i 770-1 774), ad- 
 ministers affairs during absence of 
 Carleton, 208. 
 
 Cugnet, Fran9ois Joseph, on exaction 
 of the relief after the conquest, 64 ; on 
 uniformity of the cens in Canada, 90 ; 
 on supervision of seigniorial justice, 
 152 ; prepares abstract of edicts and 
 ordinances, 201. 
 
 Cures, sent about from seigniory to seign- 
 iory, 182 ; permanently located in 
 parishes, 183 ; support given by, to 
 seigniors, 183; collect tithes, 184; 
 might exempt habitants from payment, 
 
 Custom of Paris, first official compilation 
 of (1510), 7-8 ; revision of (1580), 8 ; 
 arrangement and scope of, 8 ; commen- 
 taries on, 8 ; relation to other customs, 
 8 ; introduced into New France, 9 ; 
 unsuitability to colonial needs, 9-10 ; 
 consequences of its introduction, lo-ii; 
 provisions regarding subinfeudation, 59, 
 
 82 ; regarding exaction of the quint, 
 62 ; rules of succession regulated by, 
 
 83 ; provisions regarding the cens, 88 ; 
 regarding exercise of the droit de re- 
 trait, 97 ; its rules often disregarded in 
 Canada, loo ; on right of mill banality, 
 102; its provisions set aside. III ; on 
 scope of banal rights, 117-118; on 
 right of oven banality, T2i ; on corvee 
 exaction, 127 ; droit de colombier recog- 
 nized by, 142 ; to be followed in seign- 
 iorial courts, 152; abstract of, prepared 
 under Carleton's orders, 198-199; nature
 
 282 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of, misunderstood by English judges, 
 205 ; not customary law in English 
 sense, 206 ; importance as a source of 
 seigniorial law, 207; perpetuation in 
 civil code of Quebec, 251. 
 
 Daguesseau, Henri-Francois, eminent 
 lawyer of Paris, 41 ; requested to draft 
 an arrSt for reform of seigniorial abuses, 
 41-42; becomes chancellor of France, 
 41; opinion of, regarding provisions of 
 Arret of Marly, 62. 
 
 D'Ailleboust, Louis, governor of New 
 France (1648-1651, 1657-1658), given 
 the chatellenie of Coulonge, 169. 
 
 D'Ailleboust de Musseaux, Charles- Joseph, 
 member of noblesse, 171; poverty of, 
 
 174- 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord, governor of Canada 
 ( 1 820-1 828), action regarding com- 
 mutation of tenures, 227. 
 
 D'Auteuil, Denis-Joseph Ruette, Sieur, 
 attorney-general of New France, recom- 
 mended for rank in the noblesse, 172. 
 
 D'Auteuil, Francois Ruette, Sieur, attor- 
 ney-general of New France, delays pro- 
 mulgation of royal decree, 107. 
 
 D'Autray (or Dautre), seigniory of, stipu- 
 lations in title-deed of, 60-61 ; timber 
 for royal use taken from, 136— 137. 
 
 Deerfield, part taken by the noblesse in 
 destruction of (1704), 176. 
 
 De Gaspe, Philippe Aubert, on daily life 
 of habitants during the old regime, 153; 
 description of May-pole ceremony, 160. 
 
 Demaure, seigniory of, banal mill in, 109- 
 iio; habitants ordered to give corvees, 
 
 131- 
 
 Denombrement. See Aveu et denombre- 
 ment. 
 
 Denonville, Jacques-Rene de Brisay, Mar- 
 quis de, governor of New France (1685- 
 1689), on poverty of the noblesse, 
 172-174. 
 
 Denys (or Denis), Charles, Sieur de la 
 Trinite, member of Sovereign Council, 
 recommended for rank in the noblesse, 
 172. 
 
 Dequindre, Douville, habitant at Detroit, 
 receives new title to lands, 92. 
 
 Deschaillons. See St. Ours. 
 
 Deshaguais, M., eminent lawyer of Paris, 
 
 requested to draft an arret for reform 
 of seigniorial abuses, 41; tardiness in 
 compliance, 42; opinions on provisions 
 of the Arrlts of Marly, 62. 
 
 Des Islets, barony of, created for Talon 
 (1671), 163-164. 
 
 Desjordy, seigniory of, disputes regarding 
 corvee obligations in, 129. 
 
 Detroit, en censive grants at, 79, 91-92. 
 
 Deux-Montagnes, Lac des, seigniory of, 
 given to the Seminary of St. Sulpice at 
 Montreal (1714), 44; stipulations in 
 title-deed of, 59. 
 
 Dombourg, seigniory of, dispute regarding 
 banal rights in, 109-110. 
 
 Dorchester, Lord. See Carleton. 
 
 Douglas, Robert, on extent of seigniorial 
 jurisdiction, 147. 
 
 Dovecotes, seigniorial. See Droit de 
 colombier. 
 
 Droit de banal. See Banality, Mills, Ovens. 
 
 Droit de blairie, in France, 128. 
 
 Droit de chasse, in France and in Canada 
 compared, 141. 
 
 Droit de colombier, recognized by Cus- 
 tom of Paris, 142. 
 
 Droit de jambage, mention of, 142. 
 
 Droit de peche, nature of, 140; not an 
 important exaction, 140. See also 
 Beaches, Reservations. 
 
 Droit de retrait, recognition of, in Custom 
 of Paris, 97; different forms of, 97- 
 98; Raudot on extension of, in Canada, 
 97-98 ; Pontchartrain desires restriction 
 of, 98; Begon's interpretation of, 99; 
 incidents in other tenure systems cor- 
 responding to, 99; views of Robert 
 Abraham on service of, 99; abolilijn 
 of, 247. 
 
 Drummond, L. H., attorney-general, 
 presents list of questions to Special 
 Seigniorial Court, 249. 
 
 Duchesneau, Jacques, intendant of New 
 France (1676-1682), makes proposals 
 regarding land grants, 38; refers in 
 despatches to poverty of the noblesse, 
 
 173- 
 Dugue, Sidrac, Sieur de Bois Briant, officer 
 in the Carignan regiment, obtains seign- 
 iory of Mille Isles, 44, 73; takes part 
 in expedition to Fort Frontenac, 73; 
 disposes of seigniory, 108.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 283 
 
 Dunkin, Christopher, counsel for seign- 
 iors before Special Seigniorial Court, 
 249. 
 
 Dupuy, Claude-Thomas, intendant of New 
 France (i 725-1 728), judgment regard- 
 ing obligation of banality, 1 13. 
 
 Durantaye, Olivier Morel de la, officer of 
 the Carignan-Salieres, receives a seign- 
 iory in Canada, 70; member of expedi- 
 tion to Fort Frontenac, 73. 
 
 Durham, John George Lambton, first earl 
 of, on the shape of Canadian farms, 81 ; 
 " Report on the Affairs of British North 
 America," 237-239; opinions on the 
 relation of tenures to popular discon- 
 tent, 238-239. 
 
 Dusable, marquisate of, purchased by 
 Charles Aubert, Sieur de la Chesnaye, 
 170. 
 
 Ecu, of Louis XIV, amount of, 46. 
 
 Egremont, Lord, secretary of state for 
 the Southern Department (1761-1763), 
 asks for reports on conditions in Can- 
 ada, 190-191. 
 
 Entremont, Philippe-Mius d', receives bar- 
 ony of Pobomcoup (1652), 166. 
 
 Exodus, of French-Canadians after the 
 conquest, 192; conflicting views of 
 Suite and Garneau on extent of, 192; 
 difficulties in administration resulting 
 from, 204; opinion of Judge Baby 
 regarding its nature, 204. See also 
 Noblesse, Population. 
 
 Explorations, of Cartier and Roberval, 17; 
 La Salle given rank in the noblesse for 
 his zeal in, 171. 
 
 Faillon, M. E., historian, on services of 
 the Jesuits to agriculture, 186. 
 
 Panning-mills, sent to colony by the king, 
 116. 
 
 Fealty and homage, obligation of, in 
 France, 56; rendered by seigniors in 
 Canada, 56-57; last performed in 1854, 
 57; oath of, a pledge of military service, 
 65; rendered to seigniors by sub-seign- 
 iors, 77; rendered by habitants to 
 seigniors, 159; might be enforced by or- 
 dinance, 159; description of ceremony 
 by Kirby, 159; rendered by seigniors 
 to new suzerain, 1 90; regarded as a 
 
 prerequisite to the exaction of seign- 
 iorial dues, 203. 
 
 Ferland, J. B. A., on origin of French- 
 Canadians, 9. 
 
 Ferries, rights of seigniors to establish, 
 141; legal basis of right, 142. 
 
 Ferte, Jean Juchereau de la, member of 
 Sovereign Council, recommended for 
 rank in the noblesse, 172. 
 
 Feudalism, origin of, 2; definition of, 2-3; 
 development of, in France, 3-4; promi- 
 nence of the military obligation in, 3-4; 
 decline of, 6; relation to absolutism, 
 13; abolition of, in England, 15; first 
 implanted in New France, 19; fealty 
 and homage as an incident of, 56; 
 judicial administration an essential 
 phenomenon of, 145; attitude of 
 Louis XIV toward, 155; abolition of, 
 in Canada, 245. See also Seigniories. 
 
 Five Nations. See Iroquois. 
 
 Foi et hommage. See Fealty and hom- 
 age. 
 
 Forfeiture, of seigniories, 29-30; of lands 
 remaining uncleared, 36, 38; of en 
 censive grants, 44; decree of, affect- 
 ing twenty seigniories, 50; of banal 
 rights, 106-107. See also Retrench- 
 ment. 
 
 Foucault, Fran9ois, receives regrant of his 
 seigniory, 50. 
 
 Franc aleu noble, nature of tenure in, 52; 
 rules of succession relating to, 82. 
 
 Franc aleu roturier, nature of tenure in, 
 53; Tocqueville's definition of, 53; 
 rules of succession relating to, 83; 
 tenure en seigneurie commuted to 
 tenure in, 243, 245. 
 
 Franche aumone, nature of tenure in, 53. 
 
 Frankalmoign, nature of grants in, 53. 
 
 Fraser, Captain, receives seigniory of 
 Mount Murray (1762), 193. 
 
 Frontenac, Fort, built at Cataraqui in 
 
 1673. 73- 
 Frontenac, Louis de Buade, Count, gov- 
 ernor of New France (1672-1682, 
 1 689-1698), orders seigniors to drill 
 their habitants, 66; describes chateau 
 of Longueuil, 67; estimates population 
 of colony in 1673, 72; builds fort at 
 Cataraqui, 73; praises the disbanded 
 Carignans, 73; asks that Longueuil be
 
 284 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 made a barony, i68; recommends Her- 
 tel for letters of noblesse, 174; pre- 
 dicts land monopoly by Jesuits, 180. 
 
 French-Canadians, origin of, 9-10; Fer- 
 land on the origin of, 9 ; strength of 
 Norman element among, lo ; unfamil- 
 iar with Custom of Paris, lO ; Cata- 
 logne's description of, 47 ; pen portrait 
 of, by Hocquart, 143 ; Kalm and 
 Lahontan on economic condition of, 
 144 ; tendency to litigiousness among, 
 153 ; De Gaspe on daily life of, 153 ; 
 Talon's description of, 171 ; influ- 
 ence of the church among, 188 ; 
 exodus of, after the conquest, 192 ; 
 Murray's report on the condition of, 
 197 ; departure of leaders among, 204 ; 
 attitude during the Revolutionary War, 
 211-213; relation of English seign- 
 iors to, 233 ; economic condition of, 
 234 ; influence of notaries among, 
 234-235 ; later attitude toward the 
 seigniorial system, 241-245. See also 
 Habitants, Noblesse, Population. 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa-Denis, on 
 administration of feudal justice in 
 France, 145. 
 
 Garneau, F. X., opinions on seigniorial 
 judicial powers, 147 ; on extent to 
 which judicial powers were exercised, 
 158 ; on grants of seigniories with 
 jurisdiction after 1714, 158; on ex- 
 tent of exodus after the conquest, 192. 
 
 Gaudais, Louis, sent to Canada as royal 
 commissioner, 29. 
 
 Gaudarville, seigniory of, habitants to 
 receive new titles at customary rates, 
 90; rate of rentes in, 93; payment of 
 lods et ventes in, 96. 
 
 Gentilly, seigniory of, granted without 
 judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Gentilshommes. See Noblesse. 
 
 George III, king of Great Britain and 
 Ireland (i 760-1810), recrudescence of 
 royal power during reign of, 15. 
 
 Giffard, Robert, first seignior of Beauport, 
 
 25- 
 
 Gobin, seigniory of, its extent, 55. 
 
 Godefroy (or Godfroy), Jean-Baptiste, rec- 
 ommended for rank in the noblesse, 
 172. 
 
 Goderich, Lord, secretary of state for 
 war and for the colonies (1830-1833), 
 instructions regarding tenures in Can- 
 ada, 228. 
 
 Gosford, Lord, governor of Canada 
 ( 1 835-1 838), head of commission to 
 investigate grievances in Canada, 235; 
 dissolves parliament of Lower Canada, 
 236. 
 
 Governor, under English rule. See Carle- 
 ton, Durham, Gosford, Haldimand, 
 Murray. 
 
 Governor, under French rule, appoint- 
 ment of Champlain to post of, 24; em- 
 powered to redistribute forfeited lands, 
 28; Company of the West Indies em- 
 powered to appoint, 31 ; Charlevoix on 
 appointment of Mezy as, 32; to make 
 grants of seigniories jointly with in- 
 tendant, 37; instructed to grant lands 
 en censive when necessary, 43; reports 
 forfeiture of uncleared grants, 44; 
 authorized to make grants in absence 
 of intendant, 50; ceremony of fealty 
 and homage rendered to, 56; recom- 
 mends distribution of royal favors in 
 the colony, 162-172. See also Beau- 
 harnois, Champlain, Courcelle, D'Aille- 
 boust, Denonville, Frontenac, Lauzon, 
 Mezy, Ramezay, Vaudreuil. 
 
 Grand voyer, office of, in New France, 132. 
 
 Grant, Charles Colmore, recognized as 
 seventh baron of Longueuil, 169. 
 
 Grants, en franc aleu noble, 52-53; en 
 franc aleu roturier, 53; en franche 
 aumone, 53-54; en arriere fief, 77-78; 
 en roture or en censive, 78-79; at De- 
 troit, 79; shape of, 79-80; subdivision 
 of, 81; effect of subdivision of, 83-85. 
 See also Seigniories. 
 
 Granville, Pierre Becquart, Sieur de, 
 officer of the Carignan-Salieres, be- 
 comes a seignior in New France, 70. 
 
 Grondines, seigniory of, complaints re- 
 garding banal mill in, 113. 
 
 Habitants, explanation of term, 39; often 
 did not receive written titles, 39-41 ; 
 relation of Arret of Marly to, 43; ref- 
 erences of Catalogue to condition and 
 habits of, 47-48; ignorant of their 
 rights, 48; nature of land grants re-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 285 
 
 ceived by, 78-80; subdivision of farms 
 held by, 83-84; houses demolished 
 by intendant's order, 84; dues in seign- 
 iory of Gaudarville, 90; permitted to 
 pay dues in card money, 92; gathered 
 in November at the manor-house, 95; 
 of Varennes and Mille Isles, obtain 
 banal rights, 108; complain of ineffi- 
 ciency of seigniorial mills, 1 1 2-1 14; 
 banalities not burdensome, 120-121; 
 attracted by profits of the fur trade, 
 126; of Desjordy, ordered to render 
 corvees, 129; of La Chevrotiere, de- 
 mand food and tools during corvee 
 periods, 130; of Demaure, ordered to 
 build a bridge, 132; royal corvee of, 
 supervised by grand voyer, 132-133; 
 reservations placed upon lands of, 
 134-139; prohibited by seigniors from 
 trading with Indians, 139-140; condi- 
 tion of, as compared with French cen- 
 sitaires, 143; Kalm and Lahontan on 
 condition of, 144; disposition to litig- 
 iousness, 153; rebuked by Talon, 
 153; daily life as portrayed by De 
 Gaspe, 153; compelled to pay for 
 special sessions in seigniorial courts, 
 156; plant May-pole at the manor- 
 house, 160; more desirable as settlers 
 than gentilshommes, 174; protected by 
 intendant, 177; influence of the church 
 with, 188; respect and obey the 
 noblesse, 197; called upon by Carleton 
 for military service, 21 1; refuse to obey 
 their seigniors, 212-213; rents of, in- 
 creased after the conquest, 220; show 
 signs of discontent, 235; deserted by 
 their leaders in the rebellion, 236; dis- 
 content of, discussed by Durham, 
 238-239; proposals for commutation 
 of tenure of, 242; empowered to 
 challenge valuations made by commis- 
 sioners, 246; provisions in act of 1854 
 relating to, 247-248; lands to be held 
 en franc aleu roturier, 250-251. 
 
 Haldimand, Frederick, governor of Can- 
 ada ( 1 778-1 786), instructed to grant 
 lands to loyalists, 214. 
 
 Hamelin, Louis, seignior of Grondines, 
 
 113- 
 Haute justice. See Justice (seigniorial). 
 Haverhill, noblesse in raid on, 176. 
 
 Hay, Judge, opinion on uniformity of 
 the rate of cens, 90. 
 
 Hebert, Louis, receives seigniory of Sault 
 au Matelot (1623), 21. 
 
 Henrion de Pansey, P.P.N., on nature of 
 tenure in frankalmoign, 54; on origin of 
 the cens, 87; on scope of banalities in 
 France, loi ; concerning exercise of 
 royal authority over seigniorial mills, 
 104; on extension of banal rights to 
 grain other than wheat, 118. 
 
 Henry III, king of France (1574-1589), 
 orders revision of Custom of Paris, 8. 
 
 Henry IV, king of France (1589-1610), 
 grants commission to La Roche, 18. 
 
 Hertel de Rouville, Francois, forbidden to 
 take wood from lands of habitants, 134; 
 offered rank in the noblesse, 174. 
 
 Hertel de Rouville, Jean-Baptiste, de- 
 stroyer of Deerfield, 176; takes part in 
 raid on Haverhill, 176. 
 
 Hocquart, Gilles, acting intendant of New 
 France (1729-1731), intendant of New 
 France (1731-1748), discusses seignior- 
 ial abuses, 47-48 ; calls attention to sub- 
 division of lands, 84; orders new titles 
 at customary rates in seigniory of Gau- 
 darville, 90; endeavors to secure im- 
 provement of seigniorial mills, 115; asks 
 king for fanning-mills, 116; strives to 
 foster agriculture, 126; his description of 
 Canadian population, 143. 
 
 Honors, accorded to seigniors in France, 
 5; in Canada, 159-160. See also No- 
 blesse. 
 
 Hospital, General, at Quebec, obtains Tal- 
 on's seigniory, 165; lands held by, 181. 
 
 Hospital, General, at Montreal, lands held 
 by, 181. 
 
 Hotel Dieu, at Quebec, lands held by, 181. 
 
 Hurons, extirpation of, by Iroquois, 26. 
 
 Iberville. See Lemoyne d'lherville. 
 
 Intendant, not mentioned in edict of 1663, 
 29; calls attention to apathy of the com- 
 pany, T,T,; land grants to be made by, 
 34; instructed to prepare a table of lands 
 conceded, 36; to grant seigniories jointly 
 with governor, 37; discusses seignicjrial 
 abuses, 41-42; empowered to grant 
 lands en censive, 43; reports forfeiture 
 of many holdings, 44 ; might make
 
 286 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 grants alone in absence of governor, 
 50; complains of subdivision of small 
 holdings, 84; protection of habitants by, 
 143; appeals taken to the court of, 153; 
 enforces equality of seigniors and habit- 
 ants before the law, 177; administrative 
 jurisdiction of, not preserved after the 
 conquest, 207; powers of, declared to 
 have passed to English courts, 240. 
 See also Begon, Bigot, Champigny, 
 Duchesneau, Dupuy, Hocquart, MeuUes, 
 Raudot, Robert, Talon. 
 
 Iroquois, extirpation of Hurons by, 26; 
 scourge the colony, 2)Z'^ Carignan regi- 
 ment sent out to crush, 67; Richelieu 
 district rendered safe against, 72. 
 
 Isle aux Coudres, granted to the Jesuit 
 Seminary at Quebec, 61. 
 
 Isle Jesus, seigniory of, exchanged by 
 Berthelot for island of Orleans, 165; 
 progress made in cultivation of, 166. 
 
 Isle of Orleans, seigniory of, exchanged by 
 Laval for Isle Jesus, 165; population of 
 (1667), 186. See also St. Laurent. 
 
 Isle Perrot, seigniory of, rate of cens in, 
 during period of military rule, 206. 
 
 Isle St. Joseph, seigniory of, small extent 
 of, 60; granted without judicial rights, 
 
 147- 
 
 Isle aux Ruaux, stipulations in title-deed 
 of, 58 ; given to Jesuits, 60. 
 
 Isles Bouchard, seigniory of, rate of rentes 
 in, 93; extension of reservations forbid- 
 den in, 136. 
 
 Islets, Barony des. See Talon. 
 
 Jacques Cartier, seigniory of, granted 
 without judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Jambage. See Droit de jambage. 
 
 Jesuits, receive their first grant of lands 
 in Canada (1626), 21 ; receive lands en 
 franche aumone at Three Rivers, 25 ; 
 controversy with company over liquor 
 traffic, 26 ; receive grants en franc 
 aleu noble, 52; acquire Charlesbourg, 
 52 ; secure amortisement of estates, 
 53 ; receive seigniory of La Prairie, 54 ; 
 seigniors of Isle aux Ruaux, 60 ; ju- 
 dicial powers of, suppressed in Sillery, 
 154; lands of, taken by Talon, 162- 
 163; regain forfeited lands, 165; 
 become largest landholders in the 
 
 colony, 179; prediction of Frontenac 
 regarding, 180 ; table of lands held by, 
 180; churches erected in seigniories 
 of, 185 ; superior cultivation of their 
 seigniories, 186; services to agricul- 
 tural development, 186; order sup- 
 pressed by the Pope, 250 ; estates pass 
 to the crown, 250. See also Laval, 
 Pontbriand, St. Vallier. 
 
 Jesus, The Reverend Fathers of the So- 
 ciety and Company of. See Jesuits. 
 
 Jeu de fief. See Subinfeudation. 
 
 Juchereau de la Ferte, Jean, member of 
 council, recommended for rank in the 
 noblesse, 172. 
 
 Justice, administration of, in New France 
 before 1627, 145 ; under Company of 
 One Hundred Associates, 146 ; after 
 1663, 147 ; by royal courts, 153 ; views 
 of Lahontan on, 156-157 ; under Brit- 
 ish rule, 195 ; Murray's strictures upon, 
 197; chaos attending, 200; absence 
 of discretionary powers in, 205 ; as 
 provided for in Quebec Act, 209. 
 
 Justice, seigniorial, early history of, in 
 France, 5 ; Maitland on essential na- 
 ture of, 145 ; gradations of, 147 ; haute 
 justice, 148-149 ; moyenne justice, 
 150; basse justice, 150-15 1 ; adminis- 
 tration of, in France and in Canada 
 compared, 147-152; failure of seign- 
 iors to exercise, 152; subject to ap- 
 pellate jurisdiction of royal courts, 154 ; 
 attitude of Louis XIV toward, 155 ; 
 sundry abuses in administration of,, 
 156; views of Carleton on, 157 ; com- 
 ments of Garneau concerning adminis- 
 tration of, 158; abolished by British 
 authorities, 158, 190; in fiefs of the 
 church, 187. 
 
 Kalm, Peter, Swedish naturalist, on 
 methods of fishing on tidal beaches, 
 138 ; on dwellings of habitants, 144. 
 
 Kirby, William, describes ceremony of 
 fealty and homage, 159. 
 
 Kirke, Sir David, captures Quebec (1629), 
 24-25. 
 
 La Chevrotiere, seigniory of, disputes re- 
 garding corvee obligation in, 130. 
 Lahontan, Le Baron de, views on female
 
 INDEX. 
 
 287 
 
 emigrants to Canada, 71 ; on the com- 
 fort of the habitants, 144 ; on admin- 
 istration of justice in New France, 
 
 15^157- 
 
 Lamotte-Cadillac, Antoine de, makes in- 
 formal grants at Detroit, 79. 
 
 Lanaudiere, Charles de, submits answers 
 to disputed questions, 65, 216; peti- 
 tions for commutation of tenure, 214. 
 
 Lanaudiere, Jacques-Thomas Tarieu de, 
 officer of Carignan regiment, becomes 
 a seignior in Canada, 70. 
 
 L'Ange-Gardien, seigniory of, demolition 
 of houses in, by intendant's order, 84. 
 
 Langlois, Noel, purchases a seigniory and 
 aspires to be a gentilhomme, 172. 
 
 Langlois, Noel, carpenter, commissioned 
 to look up timber for the royal navy, 
 
 137- 
 
 Langloiserie, Charles-Gaspard Plot dit, 
 seignior of Mille Isles, 44. 
 
 La Prairie de la Magdelaine, seigniory of, 
 granted to Jesuits (1647), 54. 
 
 La Salle, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de, given 
 rank in the noblesse, 171. 
 
 La Tour, Claude-Etienne de, governor of 
 Acadia, grants barony of Pobomcoup, 
 166. 
 
 Lauzon, seigniory of, banal mill demol- 
 ished, 120. 
 
 Lauzon, Jean de, governor of New 
 France (1651-1656), ordinance relating 
 to seigniorial mills, 103 ; recommends 
 Pierre Boucher for rank in the no- 
 blesse, 171. 
 
 Laval, Frangois-Xavier de, appointed 
 bishop of Petrgea and vicar-apostolic in 
 New France (1659), 28; empowered 
 to assist governor and intendant in en- 
 forcing royal decree, 28 ; made bishop 
 of Quebec (1674), 28; estimates in- 
 creases in colonial population during 
 year 1672, 72; exchanges Isle of 
 Orleans for Isle Jesus, 165 ; work of, 
 in accumulating lands for the church, 
 181; favors seigniorial system, 182; 
 orders collection of tithe, 183; refuses 
 consecration of seigniorial churches, 
 185 ; on progress of ecclesiastical fiefs, 
 186. See also Church, Jesuits, St. Sul- 
 pice. 
 
 La Valterie (or La Valtrie), Seraphin 
 
 Margane, Sieur de, officer of the royal 
 forces, becomes a seignior in Canada, 
 
 70- 
 
 Law, English civil, introduced into Can- 
 ada (1763), 193; unsatisfactory work- 
 ing of, in relation to land tenures, 195 ; 
 abolished as regards tenures and in- 
 heritance to real property, 196 ; abol- 
 ished by Quebec Act, 209 ; established 
 in Upper Canada, 221. 
 
 Law, English criminal, established in Can- 
 ada (1763), 192; continued by Quebec 
 Act (1774), 209; established in Upper 
 Canada(i79i), 221. 
 
 Law, French civil, replaced by English 
 law and procedure (1763), 193; aboli- 
 tion of, causes difficulties, 195 ; restored 
 in part (1766), 196; recommendations 
 of Murray regarding, 198 ; compilation 
 of, 198-199; abolition of, regarded by 
 Carleton as an error, 199-200; entire 
 restoration favored by Carleton, 201- 
 202 ; restoration opposed by Maseres, 
 202; misunderstood by English judges, 
 203-207 ; bewildering nature of, 208 ; 
 entire restoration recommended by law 
 officers of the crown (1773), 209 ; re- 
 stored by Quebec Act (1774), 209; 
 revision and recodification of, 251. See 
 also Custom of Paris. 
 
 Le Barroys, Mille-Edme, agent of Com- 
 pany of the West Indies, 32 ; submits 
 proposals regarding method of granting 
 seigniories, 34. 
 
 Le Ber, Jacques, Sieur de Senneville, 
 merchant of Montreal, purchases rank 
 in the noblesse, 172. 
 
 Le Due vs. Hainaut, case of, decided by 
 military tribunal, 206, 
 
 Le Gardeur de Repentigny, Jean-Baptiste, 
 member of the noblesse of France, 171 ; 
 poverty of, 171. 
 
 Le Gardeur de Tilly, Charles, first seign- 
 ior of St. Michel, 35 ; member of the 
 French noblesse, 171 ; poverty of, 174. 
 
 Le Moine, Sir J. M., on " Tidbits of Feudal 
 Customs in Canada," 143. 
 
 Lemoyne, Charles, first seignior of Lon- 
 gueuil, 167; family of, 168-169; recom- 
 mended for rank in the noblesse, 
 172; sons of, in raid on Schenectady, 
 176.
 
 288 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lemoyne, Charles, the younger, Baron de 
 Longueuil, obtains seigniory of Belceil 
 (1713), 44; inherits father's estates, 
 167; made first baron of Longueuil, 
 168; descendants of, 168. 
 
 Lemoyne, Jean, obtains seigniory of Ste. 
 Marie (1669), 35. 
 
 Lemoyne de Bienville, Jean-Baptiste, 
 brother of first baron of Longueuil, 
 governor of Louisiana, 169; leader in 
 Schenectady raid, 176. 
 
 Lemoyne de Chateauguay, Louis, brother 
 of first baron of Longueuil, killed at 
 Fort Bourbon, 169. 
 
 Lemoyne d'Iberville, Pierre, brother of 
 first baron of Longueuil, founder of 
 Louisiana, 169; takes part in Schenec- 
 tady raid, 176. 
 
 Lemuyne de Serigny, Joseph, brother of 
 first baron of Longueuil, distinguished 
 in French service, 169. 
 
 Lemoyne de Ste. Helene, Jacques, brother 
 of first baron of Longueuil, takes part in 
 Schenectady raid, 176. 
 
 Leneuf de la Poterie, Jacques, acquires 
 seigniory of Portneuf, 1 66-1 67 ; obtains 
 lands at Three Rivers, 170; member of 
 the noblesse of France, 171. 
 
 Leneuf de la Vallieres (or Valliere), 
 Michel, acquires father's lands at Three 
 Rivers, 170. 
 
 Lods et ventes, early history of, in France, 
 4; rate of, in Custom of Paris, 96; rate 
 of, in Canada, 96; when payable, 96- 
 97; hampers transfers of land, 97; re- 
 lation of droit de retrait to, 97-99; 
 abolition of, 247; method of estimat- 
 ing compensation for loss of, 246-247; 
 opinion of Special Court on legal valid- 
 ity of, 247. 
 
 Longueuil, barony of, the fortified chateau 
 of, 66-67; created in favor of Charles 
 Lemoyne the younger, 169; its exten- 
 sive area, 169; its later history, 168— 
 169. SeeahoQxzxA (Charles Colmore). 
 
 Longueuil, seigniory of, stipulations in 
 title-deed of, 60; granted to Charles 
 Lemoyne, 167. See also Longueuil 
 (barony of). 
 
 Longueuil, town of, situated in barony, 169. 
 
 Lotbiniere, family of, in the Canadian 
 noblesse, 173. 
 
 Louis XI, king of France (1461-1483), 
 views on compilation of the cou- 
 tumes, 7. 
 
 Louis Xn, king of France (1498-1515), 
 codification of the coutumes during 
 reign of, 7. 
 
 Louis Xin, king of France (1610-1643), 
 charters Company of One Hundred 
 Associates, 22. 
 
 Louis XIV, king of France (1643-1715), 
 death of, 47; policy in regard to 
 subinfeudation of lands, 61-62; friendly 
 attitude to feudalism, 155; interest in 
 work of the church in Canada, 180. 
 
 Louis XV, king of France (1715-1774), 
 progress of seigniorial system under, 50. 
 
 Mabane, Adam, opinion on workings 
 of seigniorial system, 217-218. 
 
 McCallum vs. Gray, case of, 207, 
 
 Maitland, F. W., on significance of seign- 
 iorial justice, 145. 
 
 Malbaie, seigniory of, granted to Captain 
 John Nairn, 193. 
 
 Manesse, L., on evils of seigniorial absen- 
 teeism in France, 12. 
 
 Marie de I'Incarnation, Mere, opinion 
 regarding character of female immi- 
 grants, 72. 
 
 Marly, Arrets of (1711), provisions of, 
 42-43; their significance, 44; evaded 
 by seigniors, 47-4S; provisions reiter- 
 ated in Arret of Versailles (1732), 
 49; intentions of the king as expressed 
 in, 61-62; forbade exaction of bonus 
 by seigniors, 89; did not make rate of 
 cens uniform throughout the colony, 
 89-92; generally disregarded by seign- 
 iors after 1763, 203; held by English 
 courts to have remained in force after 
 the conquest, 220; report of the com- 
 mission of 1843 regarding contemporary 
 validity of, 240; failure of habitants to 
 secure rights under, 240-241. 
 
 Marquisates. See Dusable, Miscou. 
 
 Maseres, Francois, attorney-general of 
 Quebec, on exodus of the noblesse 
 after the conquest, 176-177; train- 
 ing in English law, 202; draws up a 
 plan of laws for the colony, 202; Carle- 
 ton's opinion of, 202; views influence 
 home authorities, 208.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 289 
 
 Maurepas, Le Comte de, minister of 
 marine, discusses evasion of royal de- 
 crees by seigniors in Canada, 49. 
 
 May-pole, to be planted at seignior's 
 house, 1 59-1 60; description of cere- 
 mony by De Gaspe, 160; habitants dis- 
 charged by intendant from obligation, 
 160. 
 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, minister of Louis XIV, 
 lack of interest in French colonies, 
 14. 
 
 Meulles, Jacques de, intendant of New 
 France (1682-1686), calls attention to 
 poverty of the noblesse, 172-174. 
 
 Mezy (or Mesy), Augustin Saffrey de, 
 governor of New France (1663-1665), 
 empowered to regrant forfeited seign- 
 iories, 28. 
 
 Military rule, administration of justice 
 during period of (1760-1764), 158; 
 divisions of colony under, 190; in- 
 terpretation of seigniorial rights by 
 military courts, 206. 
 
 Military service, obligation of, in France, 
 6; not mentioned in colonial title-deeds, 
 64; emphasized in La Roche's charter, 
 64 ; edict of 1 674 regulating, 65 ; pledged 
 by oath of fealty and homage, 65-66; 
 Carleton's opinion as to existence of, 
 66; frequent drill of habitants ordered 
 by Frontenac, 66; proposal of Talon 
 to insert obligation in title-deeds, 69; 
 Maitland on importance of, as an in- 
 cident of seigniorial tenure, 145; at- 
 tempts of Carleton to enforce, during 
 Revolutionary War, 211; opposition of 
 habitants to exaction of, 212; obliga- 
 tion becomes obsolete, 213. 
 
 Mille Isles, seigniory of, its early history, 
 44; stipulations in title-deed of, 59; loss 
 of banal rights in, 108. 
 
 Mills, seigniorial, ownership of, on par- 
 titions of seigniories, 82; provisions in 
 Custom of Paris relating to, 102; ordi- 
 nance of Lauzon relating to, 103; de- 
 cree of council regarding abuses in, 
 103; rate of toll fixed in, 103-104; 
 right of royal judges to inspect, 104; 
 Henrion de Pansey on basis of royal 
 authority over, 104; slow increase of, 
 in Canada, 105 ; decree of 1686 relating 
 to erection of, 106; despatch of Raudot 
 
 relating to, 106-107; forfeiture of rights 
 for failure to erect, 108; windmills 
 placed within category of, 108; regula- 
 tions regarding patronage of, iio-iii; 
 complaints regarding quality of flour 
 produced by, 111-112; rude equip- 
 ment of, 113-114; official attempts to 
 improve, 11 5-1 16; often built of stone 
 and sometimes fortified, 1 1 6-1 17; some- 
 times built by corvee labor, 117; charac- 
 ter of grains ground by, 118-I19; meth- 
 ods of preventing competition with, 
 1 19-120; service to advancement of 
 agriculture, 125-126; compensation re- 
 ceived by seigniors for, 246. See also 
 Banality. 
 
 Minville, seigniory of, its extent, 55. 
 
 Minister of marine, obtains charge of 
 colonial interests of France (1669), 14. 
 See also Colbert, Maurepas, Pontchar- 
 train. 
 
 Miscou, marquisate of, given to Michel de 
 Saint-Martin, 170. 
 
 Mohawks, scourge the colony, 33; Carig- 
 nan regiment sent to crush, 67; Riche- 
 lieu district rendered safe against in- 
 cursions of, 72. 
 
 Mondelet, Judge, opinion regarding uni- 
 formity of the cens, 90; on scope of 
 seigniorial leservations, 137. 
 
 Montcalm, Louis-Joseph, Marquis de, 
 commander-in-chief of French forces 
 in Canada, allows soldiers to cultivate 
 their farms, 188. 
 
 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron, 
 on the source of seigniorial jurisdic- 
 tion, 147. 
 
 Montmorenci, Henri, Due de, viceroy of 
 New France (i 620-1 624), makes first 
 seigniorial grant (1623), 21. 
 
 Montreal, capitulation of, guarantee of 
 proprietary rights by, 189-190; pro- 
 visions of, confirmed by Treaty of Paris, 
 191. 
 
 Montreal, district of, establishment of 
 royal court for, 1 53-154. 
 
 Montreal, island of, granted to the Semi- 
 nary of St. Sulpice at Paris, 61 ; stipula- 
 tions in title-deed of, 6l ; rate of lods et 
 ventes in, 96. See also St. Sulpice. 
 
 Morcellement, evil of, in France, 83; does 
 not appear in Canada, 83-84.
 
 290 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Morel de la Durantaye, Olivier, officer of 
 the Carignan-Salieres, receives a seign- 
 iory in Canada, 70; leader in expedi- 
 tion to Fort Frontenac, 73. 
 
 Morin, Charles, miller of Demaure, petition 
 of 109. 
 
 Mount Murray, seigniory of, granted to 
 Captain Fraser (1762), 193. 
 
 Moyenne justice. See Justice (seignior- 
 ial). 
 
 Murray General James, governor of Que- 
 bec (1764- 1 768), accepts fealty and 
 homage of Jean Noel, 56-57; report 
 of (1762), 191; makes seigniorial 
 grants, 193; proclamation establishing 
 civil government, 193; receives in- 
 structions regarding land grants, 194; 
 allows partial revival of French civil law, 
 195-196; returns to England, 196; 
 opinion of new English settlers, 197; de- 
 scription of habitants, 197; on adminis- 
 tration of justice after the conquest, 197. 
 
 Murray Bay, seigniory of. See Malbaie. 
 
 Musseaux, Charles-Joseph d'Ailleboust de. 
 See D'Ailleboust. 
 
 Kairn, Captain John, granted seigniory 
 of Malbaie (1762), 193. 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, revoked (1598), 18. 
 
 Neuville, seigniory of, banal mills in, II3- 
 114. 
 
 Noblesse, members of the French, among 
 Carignan officers, 67 ; in France and in 
 Canada compared, 161; La Roche and 
 Company of One Hundred Associates 
 empowered to create, 161-162; not a 
 large body, 162; titled members of, 
 162-170; Talon's memoir on, 171-172; 
 various colonials recommended for rank 
 in. 172; letters of, purchased by Le 
 Ber, 172; dire poverty of, 172-174; 
 some members of, in comfortable cir- 
 cumstances, 173; royal favors given to, 
 175; take part in border raids, 176; 
 Parkmanon, 176; relation to seigniorial 
 system, 177; exodus after the con- 
 quest, 176-177; views of Carleton and 
 Maseres on, 177; Murray's opinion of, 
 197. 
 
 Normans, strength of, in Canadian popu- 
 lation, 9-10; especially strong in rural 
 districts, 10; unfamiliar with Custom 
 
 of Paris, 10 ; prolific character of, 
 84; tendency to litigation among, 
 
 153- 
 
 Notaries, oppose interference with seign- 
 iorial system, 234; justified by Durham, 
 238. 
 
 Notre Dame des Anges, seigniory of, 
 granted to Jesuits (1626), 21; lands 
 taken by Talon, 162-163; detached 
 lands restored to, 165. 
 
 Orleans, island of, granted to Jesuits, 
 165; exchanged for Isle Jesus, 165; 
 population in 1667, 186, See also St. 
 Laurent. 
 
 Orsainville, countship of, established for 
 Jean Talon, 164; its later history, 165. 
 
 Ovens, seigniorial, right of seigniors to 
 establish, 121; very few erected in 
 Canada, 121 ; despatches of Raudot 
 relating to, 122-124; instructions of 
 Pontchartrain regarding, 122. See also 
 Banality. 
 
 Pachiriny, seigniory of, obtained by 
 Jesuits (1634), 53; extent of, 180. 
 
 Paris, Custom of. See Custom of Paris. 
 
 Paris, Treaty of, concluded in 1763, 191; 
 provisions of, 193. 
 
 Parishes, creation of, 182; distribution 
 of, 183; relation to seigniories, 183. 
 
 Parkman, Francis, attributes introduction 
 of Canadian feudalism to Richelieu, 14; 
 describes feudalism as " effete and cum- 
 brous," 19; on banalities, 125; on atti- 
 tude of Louis XIV to feudalism, 155; 
 on the noblesse in peace and war, 176. 
 
 Parliament of Paris, its part in the gov- 
 ernance of France, 14; Sovereign Coun- 
 cil to follow procedure of, 29; decision 
 as to scope of mill banality, 1 1 7. 
 
 Peche. See Droit de peche. 
 
 Perriere, Boucher de la, member of the 
 noblesse, leader in Haverhill raid, 176. 
 
 Perrot, Francois-Marie, first seignior of 
 Isle Perrot (1672), 70. 
 
 Perwich, William, English agent in Paris, 
 on nature of female immigration to New 
 France, 71. 
 
 Petit, Jean, treasurer of the marine, given 
 half interest in seigniory of Mille Isles 
 (I7I4),44.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 291 
 
 Petrsea, Fran^ois-Xavier de Laval, bishop 
 of. See Laval. 
 
 Peuvret, Dame, seignioress of Gaudar- 
 ville, ordered to grant title-deeds to 
 habitants, 90. 
 
 Piot, dit Langloiserie, Gaspard. See Lan- 
 gloiserie. 
 
 Pobomcoup, barony of, in Acadia, granted 
 to Philippe-Mius d'Entremont (1652), 
 166. 
 
 Pointe du Lac, seigniory of, granted with- 
 out judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Pontbriand, Henri-Marie Dubreil de, 
 fourth bishop of Quebec (1741-1760), 
 views seigniorial system with favor, 182; 
 endeavors to secure concord between 
 cures and seigniors, 186. 
 
 Pontchartrain, Fort, 79. 
 
 Pontchartrain, Louis Phelypeaux de, min- 
 ister of marine, desires uniformity of 
 cens in Canada, 89; on exercise of droit 
 de retrait, 98 ; instructions to Raudot 
 regarding banal ovens, 122. 
 
 Population, of New France, strength of 
 Norman element in, 9-10 ; increases 
 during period 1669-1673, 72 ; Fronte- 
 nac's estimate of, 72 ; disposition to 
 litigiousness, 155 ; of Longueuil and 
 Tremblay, 168; of Beaupre and island 
 of Orleans, 186 ; drain on, caused by 
 wars, 188 ; introduction of English ele- 
 ment in, 192; increase in rural, between 
 1 784 and 1826, 237. See also Habitants, 
 Noblesse. 
 
 Portneuf, barony of, created for Jacques 
 Leneuf de la Poterie (1681), 167. 
 
 Poterie, Jacques Leneuf de la, seignior of 
 Portneuf, 166 ; made first baron of 
 Portneuf (1681), 167. 
 
 Prevote, court of the, at Quebec, deals 
 with questions concerning seigniorial 
 mills, 112, 114 ; first estal)lished, 145 ; 
 hears appeals from seigniorial courts, 
 
 154- 
 
 Proclamation, of 1763, introduces English 
 civil law, 193 ; right of governor to 
 issue, 195 ; of 1775, calls for mili- 
 tary service, 21 1. 
 
 Prohibitions, royal, of trade with Indians, 
 75 ; of tolls upon rivers, 75. 
 
 Prohibitions, seigniorial, inserted in title- 
 deeds of arricre-tiefs, 78 ; inserted in 
 
 title-deeds of en censive grants, 139— 
 140 ; illegal, 140. 
 Poulin, Maurice, Sieur de la Fontaine, 
 first seignior of St. Maurice (1668), 
 
 35; 
 Poyrier, Vincent, ordered to be paid for 
 timber taken from his lands, 74. 
 
 Quint, nature and amount of, 62; rebate 
 of one-third, 63; when payable, 63; 
 amount after the conquest, 63 ; in 
 arriere-fiefs, 77 ; proceeds devoted 
 to civil expenses, 222 ; abolished, 
 247. 
 
 Ramezay, Claude de, governor of Mont- 
 real, obtains seigniory on river Ya- 
 maska (1713), 44. 
 
 Ratification, of seigniorial grants by the 
 king, 39 ; necessary within a year from 
 date of grant, 75. 
 
 Raudot, Jacques, intendant of New France 
 (1705-1711), directs attention of minis- 
 ter to seigniorial abuses, 39-42 ; asks 
 for uniform rate of cens, 89 ; discusses 
 payment of rentes in money or kind, 
 94 ; on abuses of droit de retrait, 97 ; 
 explains non-publication of decree of 
 1686, 106 ; protests against exaction of 
 oven banality, 122-123 ; anxious that 
 agriculture should be encouraged, 126; 
 does not mention corvee exactions, 127 ; 
 explains frequency of lawsuits, 153. 
 
 Rear fiefs. See Arriere-fiefs. 
 
 Reaume, Pierre, habitant at Detroit, re- 
 ceives new title-deed, 92. 
 
 Recollets, lands held by, 181 ; excepted 
 from certain guarantees in articles of 
 capitulation, 190. 
 
 Redevances, seigniorial, nature and 
 amount of, in France, 4-6. See also 
 Cens et rentes, Lods et ventes. 
 
 Regent, assumes direction of colonial 
 affairs on death of Louis XIV (1715), 
 47 ; council of, passes order relating 
 to corvee labor in New France, 128. 
 
 Relations, Jesuit, on progress of agricul- 
 ture during Talon's administration, 
 163. 
 
 Relief, nature and amount of, 63 ; pro- 
 vided for by rules of the French Vexin, 
 63-64 ; evidently not collected after
 
 292 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 the conquest, 64 ; opinion of Cugnet 
 on abrogation of, 64. 
 
 Renauldon, J., on character of the seign- 
 iorial bailiffs in France, 12. 
 
 Rentes, seigniorial, when and how pay- 
 able, 93 ; usually paid in poultry and 
 wheat, 93 ; table showing fluctuations 
 in value of, 94 ; Casgrain on method 
 of payment, 95 ; ordinance relating 
 to payment, 95 ; method of estimat- 
 ing compensation for loss of, 245 ; 
 abolition of, 247. See also Cens et 
 rentes. 
 
 Repentigny, Jean-Baptiste Le Gardeur de. 
 See Le Gardeur. 
 
 Report, of Gedeon de Catalogne on state 
 of the seigniories in Canada, 45-47 ; 
 of General Murray on Canadian affairs 
 (1762), 191 ; on administration of 
 justice (1766), 196-197 ; of Maseres 
 on a project of laws for Quebec, 202; 
 of Council for Trade (1770), 203 ; of 
 law officers of the crown on legal situa- 
 tion in Canada (1772-1773), 209; So- 
 licitor-General Williams on the seignior- 
 ial system (1790), 2 1 5-2 16 ; of attorney- 
 general (1794), 220 ; of Lord Durham 
 on the affairs of British North America 
 (1839), 236-239 ; of commissioners of 
 1843 on the seigniorial system, 240 ; 
 committee of the legislature (185 1), 
 244. 
 
 Requint, payment of, in France, 63. 
 
 Reservations, royal, of lands for fortifica- 
 tions, 74 ; of timber for use in royal 
 navy, 74 ; of minerals, 74 ; of lands 
 for public highways, 74 ; of fishing 
 beaches, 75 ; of right of appeal to 
 royal courts, 75 ; of right to withhold 
 ratification of concessions, 78 ; pro- 
 visions in instructions of 1763 relating 
 to, 195 ; abolition of, 247. 
 
 Reservations, seigniorial, of wood and 
 stone, 134; of minerals, 138; of fish- 
 ing rights, 139 ; of lands for seigniorial 
 buildings, 139 ; illegal, 139; abolition 
 of, 247. 
 
 Retrait. See Droit de retrait. 
 
 Retrenchment, of uncleared seigniories 
 (1672), 36; of the twentieth part of 
 uncleared lands (1679), 38. See also 
 Revocation. 
 
 Revocation, of seigniories remaining un- 
 cleared (1663), 28-30; of the char- 
 ter of Company of the West Indies 
 (1674), 37; provided for in first 
 Arret of Marly (171 1), 43; of the 
 grant of Mille Isles (1714), 44; of 
 en censive grants (i73i),44; of twenty 
 uncultivated seigniories (1741), 50; of 
 judicial rights in ecclesiastical seignior- 
 ies, 154; of the barony of Cap Tour- 
 mente, 167; of patents of noblesse, 
 171. See also Retrenchment, Sur- 
 render. 
 
 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Car- 
 dinal, minister of Louis XIII, com- 
 monly regarded as having planted 
 feudalism in Canada, 14; desires to 
 establish a military colony, 22 ; organ- 
 izes Company of One Hundred Associ- 
 ates (1627), 22. 
 
 Richelieu River, channel of Mohawk in- 
 cursions, 69 ; Talon's plan to settle 
 shores of, with soldiers, 69 ; route 
 along, rendered safe by the disbanded 
 Carignans, 70. 
 
 Rioufol, M., on origin of the right of mill 
 banality in France, loi. 
 
 Rivers, seigniors forbidden to exact toll 
 on, 75 ; rights of seigniors to establish 
 ferries across, 141 ; rights of seigniors 
 in unnavigable, 142. 
 
 Roads, built by seigniors, 81 ; to seignior- 
 ial mill, 114; corvee labor exacted for 
 building of, 131 ; duties of grand voyer 
 in construction of, 132. 
 
 Robert, Louis, first intendant of New 
 France (1663-1665), empowered to 
 regrant forfeited seigniories, 28. 
 
 Roberval, Jean-Fran?ois de la Roque, 
 Sieur de, expedition to New France, 
 
 17- 
 
 Robineau,Rene,seigniorofBecancour,i67. 
 
 Roche, Troillus du Mesgoiiets, Sieur de 
 la, commission of, 18; powers of, 
 18-19; expedition to Sable Island, 
 18; provisions regarding military ser- 
 vice in commission of, 64 ; authorized 
 to grant titles of honor, 161-162. 
 
 Rochemonteix, C. de, on services of the 
 Jesuits to agriculture, 186. 
 
 Romans, military colonization of, taken 
 as a precedent by Talon, 68.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 293 
 
 Hoque, Chevalier, ensign in the Carignan 
 regiment, obtains seigniory on the 
 RicheUeu, 70. 
 
 Roture, grants in. See Grants (en 
 censive). 
 
 Roturiers. See Habitants. 
 
 Rouville, seigniory of. Sie Hertel de 
 Rouville. 
 
 Rowan, Major-General WilHam, adminis- 
 trator of Canada (i 853-1854), receives 
 last act of fealty and homage, 57. 
 
 Sainte-Anne de la P6rade, seigniory of, 
 stipulations in title-deed of, 60; con- 
 dition of seigniorial mill in, 113. 
 
 Sainte-Anne des Monts, seigniory of, 
 stipulations in title-deed of, 60. 
 
 Sainte-Helene, Lemoyne de. See Le- 
 moyne de Ste. Helene. 
 
 Sainte-Marie (pres Batiscan), seigniory 
 of, granted to Jean Le Moyne (or Le- 
 moyne) in 1669, 35. 
 
 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Treaty of (1632), 
 restores Quebec to France, 25. 
 
 Saint-Jean, seigniory of, stipulations in 
 title-deed of, 59 ; granted without ju- 
 dicial rights, 147. 
 
 Saint- Johns, town of, in barony of Lon- 
 gueuil, 169. 
 
 Saint- Laurent, countship of, given to 
 Franijois Berthelot, 165 ; erection of 
 seigniorial church in, 184. 
 
 Saint-Martin, Michel de, marquis of 
 Miscou, 170. 
 
 Saint- Maurice, seigniory of, granted to 
 Maurice Poulin, Sieur de la Fontaine 
 (1668), 35. 
 
 Saint-Michel, seigniory of, granted to Le 
 Gardeur de Tilly (1668), 35 ; without 
 judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Saint-Ours, Jean-Baptiste, Sieur d'Es- 
 chaillons (or Deschaillons), leader in 
 Haverhill raid (1708), 176. 
 
 Saint-Ours, Pierre Roch de, officer of the 
 Carignan regiment, obtains a seigniory 
 in Canada, 70 ; takes part in expedi- 
 tion to Fort Frontenac, 73 ; poverty 
 of, 173; receives royal assistance, 174. 
 
 Saint-Paul's Island, seigniory of, becomes 
 property of Jacques le Ber, 172. 
 
 Saint-Sulpice, Seminary of, at Montreal, 
 obtains seigniory of Lac des Deux- 
 
 Montagnes (1714), 61 ; excepted from 
 provisions of act of 1854, 250. 
 
 Saint-Sulpice, Seminary of, at Paris, ob- 
 tains seigniory of island of Montreal, 
 61 ; receives certain favors regarding 
 lods et ventes, 96 ; fortified mill of, 
 I16-I17; obtains demolition of rival 
 mill, 120; allowed extension of reser- 
 vations, 135 ; lands held by, 181 ; 
 secures revocation of judicial powers, 
 187 ; provisions in Treaty of Paris re- 
 lating to, 190. 
 
 Saint- Vallier, Jean-Baptiste de la Croix- 
 Chevrieres de, second bishop of Quebec 
 (1684-1727), buys Talon's seigniory, 
 165 ; on seigniorial right of advow- 
 son, 181 ; looks with favor on seign- 
 iorial system, 182 ; endeavors to secure 
 concord between cures and seigniors, 
 186. 
 
 Salieres, Colonel Henri de Chapelais, 
 Sieur de, in command of the Carignan 
 regiment, 67. See also Carignan-Sal- 
 ieres. 
 
 Sault au Matelot, seigniory of, granted to 
 Louis Hebert (1623), 21. 
 
 Saurel (or Sorel) Pierre de, officer of the 
 Carignan regiment, receives seigniory 
 on the Richelieu, 70. 
 
 Schenectady, noblesse in the raid on 
 (1689-1690), 176. 
 
 Seigniories, population of, largely Nor- 
 man, 10 ; La Roche authorized to make 
 grants of, 18; number granted (1608- 
 1627), 21 ; Company of One Hundred 
 Associates empowered to concede, 24 ; 
 number granted by company, 25-26 ; 
 too large in extent, 28 ; royal desire 
 to reduce size of, 28-29 ; forfeiture of, 
 for failure to cultivate, 30 ; Company 
 of the West Indies empowered to make 
 grants of, 31 ; Le Barroys instructed 
 to concede, 32 ; surrender by company 
 of its right to grant, 34 ; titles of, 
 issued by Talon, 35 ; given to Carig- 
 nan officers, 36 ; royal desire for re- 
 trenchment of, 36 ; data regarding, to 
 be prepared, 36-37 ; to be granted by 
 governor and intendant jointly, 37 ; 
 retrenchment of area ordered by the 
 king, 38 ; increase in number of, 39 ; 
 to be cleared forthwith, 43 ; few for-
 
 294 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 feited by the Arrets of Marly, 44 ; only 
 five granted during the period 171 1- 
 1717, 44-45; royal decision to grant 
 no more, 45 ; fcport of Catalogne on 
 the state of, 45 ; ownership of, 46 ; re- 
 sumption of grants of, 47 ; forfeiture 
 of twenty, 49-50 ; procedure to be fol- 
 lowed in making grants of, 50 ; shape 
 and area of, 55-56 ; given to Carignan 
 officers, 67-70 ; grants en arriere-fief 
 within, 77-78 ; grants en censive 
 within, 78-80 ; rules of succession to, 
 82-83; of the church, 1 79-182; sale 
 of, to Englishmen, 192 ; granted by 
 Murray, 193 ; description of, in Dur- 
 ham's report, 237-238 ; valuation of, 
 248-250. 
 
 Seigniors, powers in France, 4-5 ; hon- 
 orary privileges in France, 12 ; rela- 
 tion to dependents, 12 ; slow in 
 clearing grants, 36 ; omit to give 
 written titles to habitants, 39-40 ; 
 forbidden to exact a bonus, 42-43 ; re- 
 unite lands to their domains, 44 ; opin- 
 ion of Catalogne on occupations and 
 character of, 47 ; violate provisions of 
 Arrets of Marly, 48 ; obligations im- 
 posed upon, 56-76 ; drawn from mili- 
 tary element, 67-70 ; rights over sub- 
 seigniors, 77-78 ; judicial powers of, 
 147-152 ; honorary privileges of, 159- 
 161 ; relation to cures, 1 83-1 86; rights 
 guaranteed in articles of capitulation, 
 189; ordered to enrol habitants for 
 military service, 211 ; allowed to com- 
 mute tenures, 223-225 ; character of 
 English, 223-224 ; dissatisfaction with 
 terms of abolition, 251-252. 
 
 Seminary, Jesuit, at Quebec, receives seign- 
 iory of Isle aux Coudres, 61; lands 
 held by, 181. See also Jesuits. 
 
 Seminary of St. Sulpice. See St. Sul- 
 pice. 
 
 Senneville, Monsieur de. See Le Ber. 
 
 Seven Years' War, strength of New France 
 in, 73; exhaustionof the colony by, 188; 
 closed by Treaty of Paris, 191. 
 
 Shelburne, Lord, secretary of state for the 
 Southern Department (i 766-1 768), re- 
 ceives report from Carleton on condi- 
 tions in Canada, 196-197; compilation 
 of laws sent to, 201. 
 
 Shortt, Adam, on depreciation of card 
 currency, 92. 
 
 Sillery, seigniory of, revocation of judicial 
 powers in, 154. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, on extent of banal exac- 
 tions in Canada, 125. 
 
 Smith, Judge, opinion on uniformity of 
 the cens in Canada, 90. 
 
 Sorel. See Saurel. 
 
 Soulanges, Pierre-Jacques de Joybert de, 
 officer of the troops, obtains a seigniory 
 in Canada, 70. 
 
 Sovereign Council. See Council (Sov- 
 ereign). 
 
 Special Court of 1854, decisions on jeu 
 de fief, 77; on uniformity of the cens, 
 90; on scope of banal rights, 117; on 
 seigniorial reservations, 137; on fishing 
 rights, 139; onillegal practices of seign- 
 iors, 139; on rights of seigniors in un- 
 navigable waters, 142; provision in act 
 of 1854 for creation of, 248; its com- 
 position, 248; arguments of counsel 
 heard by, 249; general decisions of, 
 249; opinions of judges of, 249-250; 
 relation of its decisions to compensation 
 granted seigniors, 250. 
 
 Statute, 14 Geo. Ill, c. 83, 210; 34 Geo. 
 Ill, c. 6, 219; 31 Geo. Ill, c. 31, 221; 
 3 Geo. IV, c. 119, 223; 6 Geo. IV, c. 
 59, 225; I & 2 Wm. IV, c. 20, 229; 
 3&4 Vict. c. 35, 239; 8 Vict. c. 42, 242; 
 12 Vict. c. 49, 242; i8Vict, c. 3, 245. 
 
 Stuart vs. Bowman, case of, 195. 
 
 Subinfeudation, articles in Custom of 
 Paris relating to, 58-59; not made com- 
 pulsory before 171 1, 59; relation of Ar- 
 rets of Marly to, 61-62; provisions in 
 draft arret of 1717 regarding, 62; pro- 
 cedure of, 77-78. 
 
 Sub-seigniories. See Arriere-fiefs. 
 
 Succession to lands, rules of, by Custom 
 of Paris, 82-83; to lands en seigneurie, 
 82; to lands en censive, S3; to lands en 
 franc aleu, 83; effect on division of 
 lands, 83-84; consequences in rela- 
 tion to agriculture, 83-84; still follow 
 French law, 250-251. 
 
 Sulpitians, lands held by, 181; excepted 
 from certain provisions of the articles of 
 capitulation, 190. See also St. Sul- 
 pice.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 295 
 
 Suite, Benjamin, on origin of French- 
 Canadians, 9; on extirpation of Hurons, 
 26; on history of the Carignan regi- 
 ment in Canada, 67; on origin of the 
 oblong shape of grants, 80; on nature 
 of exodus after the conquest, 192. 
 
 Superior Council. See Council (Sov- 
 ereign). 
 
 Surrender, of Quebec to Kirke (1629), 
 25; of charter by Company of One 
 Hundred Associates (1663), 27; of 
 right to grant seigniories by Company 
 of the West Indies, 34; of claims 
 against Jesuits' estates by the Papal 
 See, 250. 
 
 Syndic, powers and duties of the, 30. 
 
 Tach6, J. C, estimates per capita hold- 
 ings of land in Canada, 85. 
 
 Taine, H. A., on evils of seigniorial absen- 
 teeism in France, 12. 
 
 Talon, Jean, intendant of New France 
 (1665-1668, 1670-1672), reports apathy 
 of Company of the West Indies, 33; ac- 
 cepts proposal of Le Barroys regarding 
 land grants, 34; his liberal views, 35; 
 returns to France for a two years' stay, 
 35; returns to Canada, 36; his project 
 of military colonization, 68; arranges 
 for grants of seigniories to Carignan of- 
 ficers, 69-70; asks for wives for settlers, 
 71; aims to develop agriculture, 126; 
 rebukes habitants for litigious disposi- 
 tion, 153; establishes three villages 
 near Quebec, 162; makes purchases of 
 land, 163; receives title of Baron des 
 Islets (1671), 163-164; gives up inten- 
 dancy (1672), 164; receives title of 
 Comte d'Orsainville (1675), 164; ser- 
 vices to the colony, 165; family of, 165; 
 asks for barony for Berth elot, 166; re- 
 port on colonial noblesse (1665), 171 ; 
 recommends patents of ennoblement for 
 several prominent colonists, 172. 
 
 Talon, Jean Francois, inherits his uncle's 
 estates in New France, 165; sells lands 
 to Bishop St. Vallier, 165. 
 
 Terrier. See Census. 
 
 Thou, Christofle de, famous jurisconsult, 
 supervises revision of Custom of Paris 
 (i579-i58o),8. 
 
 Tilly, Charles Le Gardeur de, first seign- 
 
 ior of St. Michel (1668), 35; member 
 of the French noblesse, 171 ; poverty 
 of, 174. 
 
 Tithe, ordered by Bishop Laval, 183; ob- 
 ligation made permanent by royal or- 
 ders, 182-183; amount of, and method 
 of collection, 183; still exacted in Que- 
 bec, 184; not collected on products 
 other than grain, 234. 
 
 Tocqueville, Alexis de, on merits and 
 faults of the old regime, 15; on nature 
 of tenure en franc aleu roturier, 53; 
 estimate of profits of seigniorial juris- 
 diction in France, 152. 
 
 Toll, amount of, in seigniorial mills fixed 
 by decree of 1667, 103-104; millers 
 forbidden to take more than legal rate 
 of, 105; to be reckoned upon cleaned 
 grain, 116. 
 
 Tracy, Alexandre de Prouville, Marquis 
 de, lieutenant-general of the forces in 
 New France (i 665-1 667), comes to 
 Canada with Talon, 33; accepts pro- 
 posal of Le Barroys regarding future 
 land grants, 34; endorses Talon's pro- 
 ject of military colonization, 68; recom- 
 mends various colonials for rank in the 
 noblesse, 172. 
 
 Treaty, of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1632), 
 25 ; of Paris (1763), 142. 
 
 Ursulines, of Quebec, lands held by, 
 181 ; of Three Rivers, receive seign- 
 iorial grant (1727), 47; lands held by, 
 181. 
 
 Vallieres. See Leneuf de la Vallieres. 
 
 Varennes, seigniory of, banal rights in, 108. 
 
 Varennes, Rene Gaultier (or Gautier) de, 
 officer of the Carignan regiment, ob- 
 tains seigniory in New France, 70. 
 
 Vaudreuil, Pierre-P'ran^ois Rigaud, Mar- 
 quis de, governor of New France (1755— 
 1760), signs capitulation of Montreal 
 (1760), 1 89. 
 
 Ventadour, Henri de Levis, Due de, vice- 
 roy of New France (1625-1627), con- 
 firms first seigniorial grant (1626), 21. 
 
 Vercheres, Francois Jarret de, officer of 
 the Carignan-Salicres, obtains seigniory 
 in Canada, 70. 
 
 Versailles, Arret of (1732), 49.
 
 296 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Vexin, French (Vexin le Frangais), nature 
 of, 63 ; provisions relating to relief, 
 63 ; followed by Murray in seigniorial 
 grants of 1762, 193. 
 
 Victoria, queen of Great Britain and Ire- 
 land (1837-1901), recognizes the Baron 
 de Longueuil, 169. 
 
 Victoria Park, at Quebec, formed from 
 part of Talon's seigniory, 165. 
 
 Vieuxpont, seigniory of, granted without 
 judicial rights, 147. 
 
 Vincelotte, seigniory of, complaints re- 
 garding the seigniorial mill in, 112; 
 erection of a banal oven in, 121. 
 
 Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet), on 
 the frequent revisions of coutumes in 
 France, 11. 
 
 Waters, navigable, rights of seigniors 
 over, 141 ; unnavigable, rights of seign- 
 iors over, 142. 
 
 West Indies. See Company of the West 
 Indies. 
 
 Wheat, payment of rentes in, 93 ; table 
 showing fluctuations in price of, 94. 
 
 Wilcox vs. Wilcox, case of, 195, 
 
 Wilhams, Solicitor-General J., opinion on 
 rebates of lods et ventes, 96. 
 
 Wolfe, Major-General James, besieges 
 Quebec (1758), 188. 
 
 Wurtele, J. S. C, performs last act of 
 fealty and homage (1854), 57. 
 
 Yamaska, seigniory of, given to Ramezay 
 (1713), 44. 
 
 I
 
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