Jean Guion before Monsieur de Beauport
The following instance is the more common one of a seignior holding directly of the Crown. It is widely separated from the first in point of time, having occurred a year after the army of Wolfe entered Quebec. Philippe Noël had lately died, and Jean Noël, his son, inherited his seigniory of Tilly and Bonsecours. To make the title good, faith and homage must be renewed. Jean Noël was under the bitter necessity of rendering this duty to General Murray, governor for the king of Great Britain. The form is the same as in the case of Guion, more than a century before. Noël repairs to the Government House at Quebec, and knocks at the door. A servant opens it. Noël asks if the governor is there. The servant replies that he is. Murray, informed of the visitor’s object, comes to the door, and Noël then and there, “without sword or spurs, with bare head, and one knee on the ground,” repeats the acknowledgment of faith and homage for his seigniory. He was compelled, however, to add a detested innovation, the oath of fidelity to his Britannic Majesty, coupled with a pledge to keep his vassals in obedience to the new sovereign. **
The seignior was a proprietor holding that relation to the feudal superior which, in its pristine
* Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de Notre Dame de Québec,
65. This was a fief en roture, as distinguished from a fief
noble, to which judicial powers and other privileges were
attached.
** See the act in Observations de Sir L. H. Lafontaine,
Bart., sur la Tenure Seignetiriale, 217, note.
character, has been truly described as servile in form, proud and bold in spirit. But in Canada this bold spirit was very far from being strengthened by the changes which the policy of the Crown had introduced into the system. The reservation of mines and minerals, oaks for the royal navy, roadways, and a site, if needed, for royal forts and magazines, had in it nothing extraordinary. The great difference between the position of the Canadian seignior and that of the vassal proprietor of the Middle Ages lay in the extent and nature of the control which the Crown and its officers held over him. A decree of the king, an edict of the council, or an ordinance of the intendant, might at any moment change old conditions, impose new ones, interfere between the lord of the manor and his grantees, and modify or annul his bargains, past or present. He was never sure whether or not the government would let him alone; and against its most arbitrary intervention he had no remedy.
One condition was imposed on him which may be said to form the distinctive feature of Canadian feudalism; that of clearing his land within a limited time on pain of forfeiting it. The object was the excellent one of preventing the lands of the colony from lying waste. As the seignior was often the penniless owner of a domain three or four leagues wide and proportionably deep, he could not clear it all himself, and was therefore under the necessity of placing the greater part in the hands of those who could. But he was forbidden to sell any part of it which he had not cleared. He must grant it without price, on condition of a small perpetual rent; and this brings us to the cultivator of the soil, the censitaire, the broad base of the feudal pyramid. *
The tenure en censive by which the censitaire held of the seignior consisted in the obligation to make annual payments in money, produce, or both. In Canada these payments, known as cens et rente, were strangely diverse in amount and kind; but, in all the early period of the colony, they were almost ludicrously small. A common charge at Montreal was half a sou and half a pint of wheat for each arpent. The rate usually fluctuated in the early times between half a sou and two sous, so that a farm of a hundred and sixty arpents would pay from four to sixteen francs, of which a part would be in money and the rest in live capons, wheat, eggs, or all three together, in pursuance of contracts as amusing in their precision as they are bewildering in their variety. Live capons,
* The greater part of the grants made by the old Company of
New France were resumed by the Crown for neglect to occupy
and improve the land, which was granted out anew under the
administration of Talon. The most remarkable of these
forfeited grants is that of the vast domain of La Citière,
large enough for a kingdom. Lauson, afterwards governor, had
obtained it from the company, but had failed to improve it.
Two or three sub-grants which he had made from it were held
valid; the rest was reunited to the royal domain. On
repeated occasions at later dates, negligent seigniors were
threatened with the loss of half or the whole of their land,
and various cases are recorded in which the threat took
effect. In 1741, an ordinance of the governor and intendant
reunited to the royal domain seventeen seigniories at one
stroke; but the former owners were told that if within a
year they cleared and settled a reasonable part of the
forfeited estates, the titles should be restored to them.
Edits et Ordonnances, II. 555. In the case of the habitant
or censitaire forfeitures for neglect to improve the land
and live on it are very numerous.