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In front of the building, half farm-house, half manor-house, one of those rural habitations of a mixed character which were all but seigneurial, and which are at the present time occupied by large cultivators, the dogs lashed beside the apple-trees in the orchard near the house, kept barking and howling at the sight of the shooting-bags carried by the gamekeepers and the boys.
Only minor cases were dealt with in the seigneurial courts, and the appeals were not numerous. On the whole, despite its crudeness, the administration of seigneurial justice in New France was satisfactory enough. The habitants, as far as the records show, made no complaint. Justice was prompt and inexpensive. It discouraged chicane and common barratry.
Heir to a seigneurial estate, which had been elevated to a marquisate in the reign of Louis XII, son of a father who had the strictest notions as to the preservation of pure blood, Henri de Prerolles, early initiated into the practice of the breaking and training of horses, was at eighteen as bold and dashing a rider as he was accomplished in other physical exercises; and although, three years later, at his debut at St.
So long as the land was weak and depended for its very existence upon the solidarity of its people, so long as the intendant was there to guide the system with a praetorian hand and to prevent abuses, so long as strength was more to be desired than opulence, the seigneurial system served New France better than any other scheme of landholding would have done.
Few among the laity could even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper for public affairs. They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; from them were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimes the sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of the kingdom. The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, were always forced to employ them.
An increasingly important question, soon to overshadow all others, was defence. In April 1768 Carleton had proposed the restoration of the seigneurial militia system.
The cardinal- minister, it is said, had an idea that the landless aristocrats of France might be persuaded to emigrate to the colonies by promises of lavish seigneurial estates wrested from the wilderness.
In 1673 the population of New France was figured at about seven thousand; in 1760 it had reached nearly fifty thousand. The development of agriculture on the seigneurial lands did not, however, keep pace with growth in population. It was hard to keep settlers to the prosaic task of tilling the soil. There were too many distractions, chief among them the lure of the Indian trade.
There were enough landless gentlemen in France; why should they not be used as the basis of a seigneurial nobility in the colony? It was with this idea in view that the Company of One Hundred Associates was empowered not only to grant large tracts of land in the wilderness, but to give the rank of gentilhomme to those who received such fiefs.
At night Bertha asked her cousin according to the old custom, to which the ladies of our day object to keep her company in her big seigneurial bed. To which request Sylvia replied in order to keep up the role of a well-born maiden that nothing would give her greater pleasure.
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