The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism

by William Bennett Munro

For a time the immigrants found little or no difficulty in obtaining farms on easy terms. Seigneurs were glad to give them land without any initial payment and frequently promised exemption from the usual seigneurial dues for the first few years. In any case these dues and services, which will be explained more fully later on, were not burdensome. Any settler of reasonable industry and intelligence could satisfy these ordinary demands without difficulty. Translated into an annual money rental they would have amounted to but a few sous per acre. But this happy situation did not long endure. As the settlers continued to come, and as children born in the colony grew to manhood, the demand for well-situated farms grew more brisk, and some of the seigneurs found that they need no longer seek tenants for their lands. On the contrary, they found that men desiring land would come to them and offer to pay not only the regular seigneurial dues, but an entry fee or bonus in addition. The best situated lands, in other words, had acquired a margin of value over lands not so well situated, and the favoured seigneurs turned this to their own profit. During the early pears of the eighteenth century, therefore, the practice of exacting a prix d'entree became common; indeed it was difficult for a settler to get the lands he most desired except by making such payment. As most of the newcomers could not afford to do this they were often forced to make their homes in unfavourable, out-of-the-way places, while better situations remained untouched by axe or plough.

The watchful attention of the intendant Raudot, however, was in due course drawn to this difficulty. It was a development not at all to his liking. He thought it would be frowned upon by the king and his ministers if properly brought to their notice, and in 1707 he wrote frankly to his superiors concerning it. First of all he complained that 'a spirit of business speculation, which has always more of cunning and chicane than of truth and righteousness in it,' was finding its way into the hearts of the people. The seigneurs in particular, he alleged, were becoming mercenary; they were taking advantage of technicalities to make the habitants pay more than their just dues. In many cases settlers had taken up lands on the merely oral assurances of the seigneurs; then when they got their deeds in writing these deeds contained various provisions which they had not counted upon and which were not fair. 'Hence,' declared the intendant, 'a great abuse has arisen, which is that the habitants who have worked their farms without written titles have been subjected to heavy rents and dues, the seigneurs refusing to grant them regular deeds except on onerous conditions; and these conditions they find themselves obliged to accept, because otherwise they will have their labour for nothing.'

The royal authorities paid due heed to these complaints, and, although they did not accept all Raudot's suggestions, they proceeded to provide corrective measures in the usual way. This way, of course, was by the issue of royal edicts. Two of these decrees reached the colony in the due course of events. They are commonly known as the Arrets of Marly, and bear date July 11, 1711. Both were carefully prepared and their provisions show that the royal authorities understood just where the entire trouble lay.

The first arret went direct to the point. 'The king has been informed,' it recites, 'that there are some seigneurs who refuse under various pretexts to grant lands to settlers who apply for them, preferring rather the hope that they may later sell these lands.' Such attitude, the decree went on to declare, was absolutely repugnant to His Majesty's intentions, and especially 'unfair to incoming settlers who thus find land less open to free settlement in situations best adapted for agriculture.' It was, therefore, ordered that if any applicant for lands should be by any seigneur denied a reasonable grant on the customary terms, the intendant should forthwith step in and issue a deed on his own authority. In this case the annual payments were to go to the colonial treasury, and not to the seigneur. This decree simplified matters considerably. After it became the law of the colony no one desiring land from a seigneur's ungranted domain was expected to offer anything above the customary annual dues and services. The seigneur had no legal right to demand more. By one stroke of the royal pen the Canadian seigneur had lost all right of ownership in his seigneury; he became from this time on a trustee holding lands in trust for the future immigrant and for the sons of the people. However his lands might grow in value, the seigneur, according to the letter of the law, could exact no more from new tenants than from those who had first settled upon his estate. This was a revolutionary change; it put the seigneurial system in Canada on a basis wholly different from that in France; it proved that the king regarded the system as useful only in so far as it actively contributed to the progress of the colony. Where it stood in the way of progress he was prepared to apply the knife even at its very vitals.

Unfortunately for those most concerned, however, the royal orders were not allowed to become common knowledge in the colony. The decree was registered and duly promulgated; then quickly forgotten. Few of the habitants seem to have ever heard of it; newcomers, of course, knew nothing of their rights under its provisions. Seigneurs continued to get special terms for advantageous locations, the applicants for lands being usually quite willing to pay a bonus whenever they could afford to do so. Now and then some one, having heard of the royal arret, would appeal to the intendant, whereupon the seigneur made haste to straighten out things satisfactorily. Then, as now, the presumption was that the people knew the law, and were in a position to take advantage of its protecting features; but the agencies of information were so few that the provisions of a new decree rarely became common property.

The second of the two arrets of Marly was designed to uphold the hands of those seigneurs who were trying to do right. The king and his ministers were convinced, from the information which had come to them, that not all the 'cunning and chicane' in land dealings came from the seigneurs. The habitants were themselves in part to blame. In many cases settlers had taken good lands, had cut down a few trees, thinking thereby to make a technical compliance with requirements, and were spending their energies in the fur trade. It was the royal opinion that real homesteading should be insisted upon, and he decreed, accordingly, that wherever a habitant did not make a substantial start in clearing his farm, the land should be forfeited in a year to the seigneur. This arret, unlike its companion decree, was rigidly enforced. The council at Quebec was made up of seigneurs, and to the seigneurs as a whole its provisions were soon made known. During the twenty years following the issue of the decree of 1711 the intendant was called upon to declare the forfeiture of over two hundred farms, the owners of which had not fulfilled the obligation to establish a hearth and home (tenir feu et lieu) upon the lands. As a spur to the slothful this decree appears to have had a wholesome effect; although, in spite of all that could be done, the agricultural development of the colony proceeded with exasperating slowness. Each year the governor and intendant tried in their dispatches to put the colony's best foot forward; every autumn the ships took home expressions of achievement and hope; but between the lines the patient king must have read much that was discouraging.

It may be well at this point to take a general survey of the colonial seigneuries, noting what progress had been made. The seigneurial system had been a half-century in full flourish—what had it accomplished? That is evidently just what the home authorities wanted to know when they arranged for a topographical and general report on the seigneuries in 1712. This investigation, on the intendant's advice, was entrusted to an engineer, Gedeon de Catalogne. Catalogne, who was a native of Bearn, born in 1662, came to Canada about the year 1685. He was engaged on the improvement of the colonial fortifications until the intendant set him to work on a survey of the seigneuries. The work occupied two or three years, in the course of which he prepared three excellent maps showing the situation and extent of all the seigneuries in the districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. The first two maps have been preserved; that of the district of Montreal was probably lost at sea on its way to France. With the two maps Catalogne presented a long report on the ownership, resources, and general progress of the seigneuries. Ninety-three of them are dealt with in all, the report giving in each case the situation and extent of the tract, the nature of the soil and its adaptability to different products, the mineral deposits and timber, the opportunities for industry and trade, the name and rank of the seigneur, the way in which he had come into possession of the seigneury, the provisions made for religious worship, and various other matters.

Catalogne's report shows that in 1712 practically all the lands bordering on both sides of the St Lawrence from Montreal to some distance below Quebec had been made into seigneuries. Likewise the islands in the river and the lands on both sides of the Richelieu had been apportioned either to the Church orders or to lay seigneurs. All these tracts were, for administrative purposes, grouped into the three districts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; the intendant himself took direct charge of affairs at Quebec, but in the other two settlements he was represented by a subordinate. Each district, likewise, had its own royal court, and from the decisions of these tribunals appeals might be carried before the Superior Council, which held its weekly sessions at the colonial capital.

On the island of Montreal was the most important of the seigneuries in the district bearing its name. It was held by the Seminary of St Sulpice, and its six parishes contained in 1712 a population of over two thousand. The soil of the island was fertile and the situation was excellent for trading purposes, for it commanded the routes usually taken by the fur flotillas both from the Great Lakes and from the regions of Georgian Bay. The lands were steadily rising in value, and this seigneury soon became one of the most prosperous areas of the colony. The seminary also owned the seigneury of St Sulpice on the north shore of the river, some little distance below the island.

Stretching farther along this northern shore were various large seigneuries given chiefly to officers or former officers of the civil government, and now held by their heirs. La Valterie, Lanoraie, and Berthier-en-Haut, were the most conspicuous among these riparian fiefs. Across the stream lay Chateauguay and Longueuil, the patrimony of the Le Moynes; likewise the seigneuries of Varennes, Vercheres, Contrecoeur, St Ours, and Sorel. All of these were among the so-termed military seigneuries, having been originally given to retired officers of the Carignan regiment. A dozen other seigneurial properties, bearing names of less conspicuous interest, scattered themselves along both sides of the great waterway. Along the Richelieu from its junction with the St Lawrence to the outer limits of safe settlement in the direction of Lake Champlain, a number of seigneurial grants had been effected. The historic fief of Sorel commanded the confluence of the rivers; behind it lay Chambly and the other properties of the adventurous Hertels. These were settled chiefly by the disbanded Carignan soldiers, and it was their task to guard the southern gateway.