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No longer does his position give him the authority of a magistrate; no longer must the habitants grind their corn at his mill; no longer can he claim lods et ventes when land is sold. For the loss of these rights he was paid compensation out of the public treasury. With the abolition of the seigniorial system ends too the story of the Nairne family.
The cens et rentes made up the only payment which the seigneur received each year, but there was another which became due at intervals. This was the payment known as the lods et ventes, a mutation fine which the seigneur had the right to demand whenever a farm changed hands by sale or by descent, except to direct heirs.
The result was that all lands previously held en fief, en arrière fief, en censive, or en roture, under the old French system, were henceforth placed on the footing of lands in the other provinces, that is to say, free and common socage. The seigniors received liberal remuneration for the abolition of the lods et ventes, droit de banalité, and other rights declared legal by the court.
The lady accepted the homage of Sieur Tranchelot, graciously remitted the lods et ventes, the fines payable to the seigneur, gave him the cup of wine to drink when he rose to his feet, and ordered him to be generously entertained by her majordomo, and sent back to the Bocage rejoicing.
The merchant, no longer possessing the means of making his fortune by fair speculation, has recourse to this nefarious mode of bettering his condition. He settles with his creditors for a small per centage; disposes of his property by fictitious sales, ventes simulees, and thus enriches himself upon the ruin of his creditors.
The cens et rentes were unduly raised, the droit de banalité was pressed to the extent that if a habitant went to a better or more convenient mill than the seignior's, he had to pay tolls to both, the transfer of property was hampered by the lods el ventes and the droit de retraite, and the claim always made by the seigniors to the exclusive use of the streams running by or through the seigniories was a bar to the establishment of industrial enterprise.
So these charges were often increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical progression. Thus the cens et rentes began to bring in a real income. So did the lods et ventes, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of whatever land the habitant sold.
Only in the days after the conquest, when land rose in value and transfers became more frequent, could the lods et ventes be counted among real sources of seigneurial income. Then there were the so-termed banalites. In France their name was legion; no one but a seigneur could own a grist-mill, wine-press, slaughter-house, or even a dovecot.
Thus re-granted, the seigneur could not eject the habitant, but was allowed to receive a nominal or feudal rent from the vassal, and the usual droits. These droits are, first, the barbarous "lods et ventes," or one thirteenth of the money upon every transfer which the habitant makes by sale only; but the original rent can never be raised, whatever value the land may have attained.
Signor Polizzi, however, informed me that he was not at liberty to dispose of the article, inasmuch as it did not belong to him, and was to be sold at auction shortly, at the Hotel des Ventes, with a number of other MSS. and several incunabula. This was a severe blow to me. It tried to preserve my calmness, notwithstanding, and replied somewhat to this effect: "You surprise me, Monsieur!
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