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56-554: The RCM is named after Pierre de Saurel , a captain of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who rebuilt Fort Richelieu in 1666 and later became the area's seigneur. There are 12 subdivisions within the RCM: Highways and numbered routes that run through the municipality, including external routes that start or finish at the county border: Pierre de Saurel Pierre de Saurel (1626–1682)

112-417: A habitant was granted the title deed to a lot, he had to agree to accept a variety of annual charges and restrictions. Rent was the most important of these and could be set in money, produce or labour. Once this rent was set, it could not be altered, neither due to inflation nor time. A habitant was essentially free to develop his land as he wished, with only a few obligations to his seigneur . Likewise,

168-440: A seigneur did not have many responsibilities towards his habitants . The seigneur was obligated to build a gristmill for his tenants, and they in turn were required to grind their grain there and provide the seigneur with one sack of flour out of every 14. The seigneur also had the right to a specific number of days of forced labour by the habitants and could claim rights over fishing, timber and common pastures. Though

224-463: A 45.7 km (28.4 mi) segment of the colonial boundary was drawn at the west edge of the westernmost contiguous manorial estates along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, accounting for the small triangle of land at Vaudreuil-Soulanges that belongs to Quebec rather than Ontario. Only two outlying feudal manors were ever established in the area that became Upper Canada, being located at L'Original on

280-551: A century. This was the prime land; also many Englishmen and Scotsmen purchased manorial estates; others were divided equally between male and female offspring; some were run by the widows of manorial lords as their children grew to adulthood. Over time land became subdivided among the owners' offspring and descendants, resulting in increasingly narrow plots of land. When Quebec was divided in December 1791 between Lower Canada (today's Quebec ) and Upper Canada (today's Ontario ),

336-471: A few hundred yards—creating something of a proto-neighborhood. Although legislation and enforcement varied depending on the period and administration, a socager's rights of entitlement to their villeinage could not be revoked as long as they paid their duties and fees to the lord of the manor and satisfied the requirements of tenir feu et lieu . This stipulated that they were obliged to improve their landholdings or these would be confiscated. By ordinance of

392-672: A means of maximizing ease of transit, commerce, and communication by using natural waterways (most notably, the St. Lawrence river) and the relatively few roads. A desirable plot had to be directly bordering or in very close proximity to a river system, which limited plot-expansion to one of two directions—left or right. Despite the official arrangement reached between Cardinal Richelieu and the Company of One Hundred Associates, levels of migration to French colonies in North America remained extremely low. The resulting scarcity of labour had

448-481: A profound effect on the system of land distribution and the habitant -seigneurial relationship that emerged in New France. King Louis XIV instituted a condition on the land, stating that it could be forfeited unless it was cleared within a certain period of time. This condition kept the land from being sold by the seigneur , leading instead to its being sub-granted to peasant farmers, the habitants . When

504-536: A rowed system, wherein the first row bordered the river, and was the first to be filled, followed by the second behind it and so on. Typically, the proportions of such rectangles coincided with the ratio of 1:10 for width and length, respectively. However, extremes all the way up to 1:100 are known to have occurred. This method of land division confers obvious advantages in terms of easy access to transportation and cheap surveying, but also allowed socagers to live remarkably close to families on neighboring plots—often within

560-443: A square timber manor house, a windmill of field stone, a stable, two barns and a sheepfold. A chapel dedicated to St. Pierre was built in 1670, and in 1672, Saurel was officially granted title to the seigneury. Saurel had no training as a farmer nor did many of his men. Many of them were reluctant to received an alloment of land for which they would pay an annual rent to Saurel, preferring instead to work for wages. By 1681 only 10 of

616-628: A stranger who has acquired rights originally belonging to our ancestral families". In 1928, the Seigniories Act was amended to require the compilation of all information relating to dues and related capital by municipality. In 1935, the Legislature of Quebec passed the Seigniorial Rent Abolition Act , which aimed to "facilitate the freeing of all lands or lots of land from rentcharges." It provided for: It

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672-408: Is estimated that around 95% of all villein estates were between 40 and 200 arpents (14 and 68 ha; 34 and 169 acres) in size, though most were likely 120 arpents or less. Estates of less than 40 square arpents were considered to be of little value by villein socagers. To maximize simplicity when surveying, estates in villein socage were almost invariably distributed in rectangular plots following

728-797: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the conquest of Quebec by the British during the Seven Years' War , the system became an obstacle to colonization by British settlers, not least because England had already abolished feudal land tenure under the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 . Nevertheless, the Quebec Act of 1774 retained French civil law and therefore the manorial system. Manorial land tenure remained relatively intact for almost

784-512: The French king . French monarchs did not impose feudal land tenure on New France, and the king's actual attachment to these lands was virtually non-existent. Instead, landlords were allotted land holdings known as manors and presided over the French colonial agricultural system in North America. Manorial land tenure was introduced to New France in 1628 by Cardinal Richelieu . Richelieu granted

840-725: The Ottawa River and Cataraqui at the eastern end of Lake Ontario at what is now Kingston and Wolfe Island . Tenure in the Upper Canada manors was converted into fee simple (freehold) under the Constitutional Act 1791 . The British Parliament passed legislation in 1825 that provided for the commutation of manorial land tenure, upon the agreement of the lord of the manor and the tenants concerned. As no incentives were given, few such conversions took place. The Province of Canada also attempted to facilitate

896-515: The seigneurial system ( French : Régime seigneurial ), was the semi- feudal system of land tenure used in the North American French colonial empire . Economic historians have attributed the wealth gap between Quebec and other parts of Canada in the 19th and early 20th century to the persistent adverse impact of the seigneurial system. Both in nominal and legal terms, all French territorial claims in North America belonged to

952-930: The Governor of Montreal, Claude de Ramezay . Sorel , the fourth-oldest city in the province of Quebec, is named after Pierre de Saurel. In 2001, the city amalgamated with the city of Tracy located on the opposite side of the Richelieu River. In 2009, the Le Bas-Richelieu Regional Municipality was renamed the Pierre-De Saurel Regional County Municipality . Several cities in the Province of Quebec including Montreal have streets named after Saurel. Seigneurial system of New France The manorial system of New France , known as

1008-478: The Intendant in 1682, a socager could not hold more than two villeinages. The lord of the manor rented most of the land to tenants, known as censitaires or habitants , who cleared the land, built houses and other buildings, and farmed the land. A smaller portion of the land was kept as a demesne (land owned by the manorial lord and farmed by his family or by hired labour) which was economically significant in

1064-541: The Mohawk had hastily abandoned and destroyed their stores of food. A peace settlement with the Mohawk was reached the following year. In 1667, two of Saurel’s men were arrested for theft and counterfeiting. Jean Sendil was imprisoned for three years while the other, Desrochers, was hanged on June 28, 1667. Before the Carignan-Salières returned to France in 1668, the officers and men of the regiment were given

1120-489: The SNRRS by the municipalities was made eleven years earlier than planned, on 11 November 1970 instead of 11 November 1981, due to an apparently effective management of the system. Remnants of the manorial system can be seen today in maps and satellite imagery of Quebec, with the characteristic "long lot" or "river lot" land system still forming the basic shape of current farm fields and clearings, as well as being reflected in

1176-662: The SNRRS) to the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec . These documents constitute an amount equal to 20.5 meters of textual records. A comparable manorial system was the patroon system of heritable land established by the Dutch West India Company . The company granted feudal powers to the "patroons", who paid for the transport of settlers in New Netherland . The system was not abolished by

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1232-722: The Salières (formerly the Balthasar Regiment), raised by Johann Balthasar de Gachéo during the Thirty Years' War. Early in 1665, the Carignan-Salières received orders to deploy overseas to New France. The struggling colony had recently become a royal province but was threatened by the Mohawk , the easternmost of the five Iroquois nations. The regiment marched from northeastern France to the Atlantic coast and arrived at

1288-457: The children (both male and female). This could lead to an unusual (for the time period) number of women, generally widows, who were in charge of large amounts of property. However, it is also worth noting that most widows remarried within a short time of their spouse's death and often the meticulous splitting of estates demanded by the Custom of Paris was disregarded in favor of quickly solidifying

1344-406: The commutation of all feu-duties and rents (other than those relating to cens et rentes ) through payments to the lords from a fund appropriated for that purpose. Some of the vestiges of this system of landowning continued into the 20th century as some of the rentcharges continued to be collected as before on the traditional date of St. Martin's Day . The final steps towards actual abolition of

1400-430: The demands of the seigneurs became more significant at the end of French rule, they could never obtain enough resources from the rents and fees imposed on the habitants alone to become truly wealthy, nor leave their tenants in poverty. Habitants were free individuals; seigneurs simply owned a "bundle of specific and limited rights over productive activity within that territory". The seigneur – habitant relationship

1456-583: The early days of settlement, though less thereafter. Manorial land tenure in New France differed somewhat from its counterpart in France; the manorial lords of New France were not always nobles, though many were. Fiefs in North America were granted to military officers and – as in France – many were owned by the Catholic clergy. However, the system was feudal in the sense that there was a clear displacement of wealth happening from tenants to their landlords, which

1512-647: The historic county boundaries along the St. Lawrence River. This form of land use can also be seen in images of Louisiana , which also was founded as a French colony with somewhat similar agricultural patterns. Also, this form of land use can be seen along the Red River in southern Manitoba and along certain portions of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatchewan near Batoche, where significant Metis and French-Canadian settlement occurred. It

1568-405: The manorial lord as before. Any amount owing after that date would be paid to the municipality. The amounts paid to the various municipalities were unequal as they did not directly correspond with the boundaries of the former manors. Many municipalities allowed a lump sum payment of the amount owing, rather than impose a small annual tax over the 41 years as permitted. The final installment paid to

1624-474: The matter. The King responded by requiring the minimum plot size which a villein socager might cultivate or reside to be one arpent and a half of frontage by 30–40 arpents in depth. A final characteristic of villeinage is that the size of the fief typically varied in direct proportion with its distance from the nearest town, while its population density varied inversely. Elsewhere this kind of property inheritance law often led to fragmentation of estates. However,

1680-470: The nearest Mohawk village, Saurel encountered a delegation who were returning the four unharmed prisoners to New France. Saurel refused his Algonquin allies' demand that the Mohawk be turned over to them. He ordered his men to turn back and escorted the delegation to Quebec. Saurel’s company participated in Tracy’s large-scale expedition against the Mohawk later that year. The expedition razed four villages which

1736-459: The new union. In order to preserve each of the heirs' access to the river or road, the land would be divided lengthwise, resulting in narrower and narrower lots. In response to these increasingly subdivided farm plots and the issues of diminishing agricultural productivity associated with them, the Governor and the Intendant of New France petitioned the King in 1744 to issue a new ordinance rectifying

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1792-525: The newly formed Company of One Hundred Associates all lands between the Arctic Circle to the north, Florida to the south, Lake Superior in the west, and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. In exchange for this vast land grant and the exclusive trading rights tied to it, the Company was expected to bring two to three hundred settlers to New France in 1628, and a subsequent four thousand during

1848-518: The next fifteen years. To achieve this, the Company subinfeudated almost all of the land awarded to it by Cardinal Richelieu — that is, parceled it out into smaller units that were then run on a feudal-like basis and worked by habitants . The lands were arranged in long narrow strips called seigneuries or fiefs along the banks of the St. Lawrence River , its estuaries, and other key transit features. This physical layout of manorial property developed as

1904-483: The opportunity to remain in New France as settlers. Because he had been an officer, Saurel was granted a seigneury centered on Fort Richelieu. As seigneur, Saurel was responsible for recruiting habitants to clear and farm the land. 29 members of his company settled on the land of their captain, joined by four others whose officers had returned to France. In October 1668, Saurel married Catherine, daughter of Charles Legardeur de Tilly . Inside Fort Richelieu he built

1960-452: The original 33 still held land under Saurel. Some had returned to their former trades, some had become coureur des bois and a few had returned to France. In 1681 the seigneury had a population of 118 with roughly 400 acres under cultivation. The inhabitants included farmers, shoemakers, carpenters, a ropemaker, tanner, miller, edge-tool maker, cooper, and a surgeon. To supplement the income from his seigneury, Saurel became involved in both

2016-644: The port city of La Rochelle at the beginning of April. The first four companies of the regiment left La Rochelle for New France in mid-April. The next eight companies, including Saurel’s, sailed on May 13. Before boarding they were inspected by Jean Talon , the newly appointed Intendant of New France . Talon praised Saurel’s company, writing that it was “much better than the others in terms of weapons and clothing.” He recommended that an award of 15 to 20 pistoles (Spanish gold coins) be given to Saurel. Saurel’s company sailed aboard La Paix and arrived at Quebec on August 19, 1665. Six days after his arrival, Saurel

2072-620: The process through passage of a further Act in 1845. The manorial system was formally abolished through the passage of the Feudal Abolition Act 1854 by the Parliament of the Province of Canada , which received royal assent on 18 December 1854. It provided for: After the required schedules for each manorial estate were published in 1859, the Parliament passed The Seigniorial Amendment Act of 1859 , which provided for

2128-466: The relatively insignificant sums of money from the feu-duties were used largely in the purchase of luxury items which were almost always imported from France. Altman theorizes that since the villein socagers would have either re-invested this money or bought goods produced locally, this limited growth and was damaging to the economy of New France. Though Altman later altered the precise estimates he made (based on annual outputs) of how much disposable income

2184-541: The seigneurial system of land tenure. Three townships, Monroe . Frenchtown , and Raisinville , are unique in Michigan, as having a boundary that does not align with a longitude, but instead is perpendicular to the River Raisin, and aligns with the, still existent, seigneurial system land boundaries. Vestiges of this system are seen in the payment of land tax. The seigneurial system landowners pay on 31 December for

2240-415: The situation of the short cadastre (survey) of 1854, it was determined that annuities owed amount to no more than 25% of the original amount owed by the villein socagers overall. Some had not been paid since the 19th century. To rectify the situation for once and all, the SNRRS issued an edict dated 15 September 1940 stating that whatever was due no later than 11 November of that year was to be paid directly to

2296-421: The socagers might have been deprived of (and therefore the amount of local investment lost), he confirmed his original thesis that the feudal fees reduced growth through wealth transfer. Other historians such as Allan Greer have also argued that the wealth transfer limited the growth of the villein socagers' farms as well as other local enterprises, which in the long run might limit general economic growth. After

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2352-573: The son of Mathieu de Saurel and Jeanne de Girard was baptized at Grenoble , France on December 26, 1626. His father was a lawyer. It is not known when Saurel became a military officer but by 1665 he was a captain and company commander in the Carignan-Salières Regiment. The Carignan-Salières was formed in 1659 by the merger of two existing regiments: the Carignan, raised in 1644 by Thomas-François de Savoie, Prince of Carignan, and

2408-415: The structure of feudal land tenure itself might have caused delays in economic growth for New France. Morris Altman, for example, argued that by shifting disposable wealth and therefore spending power from the villein socagers to the manorial lords (crown vassals), the system deeply altered the economy of New France. Furthermore, since the manorial lords rarely had their estates as their chief source of income,

2464-425: The subsistence level farming of many of the villein socagers in New France made fragmentation impossible and so it was common practice for one heir to buy out the others' land, keeping estates in more or less one piece. It is also worth noting that anything but direct inheritance meant the property might be subject to the entry fine of 1/12th of the value of the property due to the lord. Some historians suggest that

2520-463: The summer of 1682 that captured Fort Nelson and seized a ship carrying furs bound for Boston . Saurel died suddenly in Montreal on November 26, 1682, and was buried there two days later. He was heavily in debt when he died having mortgaged his seigneury several years earlier. His widow, Catherine, successfully avoided foreclosure and eviction until February 1713 when the seigneury was awarded to

2576-510: The system of rentcharges took place under the government of Louis-Alexandre Taschereau , when the cause was promoted by Télesphore-Damien Bouchard , the Liberal deputy and mayor of Saint-Hyacinthe . He declared that "a very large number of villein socagers have not yet redeemed for over the seventy years that they have been able to do so [since the passage of the 1854 law]" and they must "make an annual pilgrimage to pay [the dues], very often, to

2632-722: The timber trade and the fur trade . He received a contract from Talon to supply oak and pine planks for ships being built at Quebec, however, this did not continue after the intendant returned to France in 1672. In 1681, Saurel became a partner in the Compagnie de la Baie du Nord , a business venture headed by Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye that sought to challenge the supremacy of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Hudson Bay . He accompanied Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers on an expedition to Hudson’s Bay in

2688-490: The year just over, while the rest of Michigan pays on 1 January for the year to come. Vestiges of the former system still emerge from time to time. In February 2005, the Superior Court of Quebec issued an order cancelling mortgages that could still exist for feu-duties on a property that was once part of Beauport Manor, Four years later there was an announcement that a wind farm , consisting of 131 wind turbines ,

2744-651: Was a captain in France's Carignan-Salières Regiment and later a seigneur in New France . He was with the Carignan-Salières in 1665 when it was sent to New France to protect the colony from the Iroquois . When the regiment returned to France in 1668, Saurel remained behind and was granted a seigneury at the mouth of the Richelieu River , now the site of the city of Sorel-Tracy in Quebec , Canada . Saurel,

2800-800: Was also the pattern in the Illinois Country developed by the French east of the Mississippi River, as in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois . This system is also visible in the streets of Detroit, Michigan . The earliest streets were named after the owners of each farm, such as Livernois being named after the Livernois Family ribbon farm. In Monroe County, Michigan , land on the River Raisin just west of Monroe , 35 mi (56.33 km) south of Detroit, also clearly shows

2856-563: Was contemplated that the manorial lords would receive their commutation payments by 11 November 1936, in consideration of the capital represented by the feu-duties to be collected. However, the work of the SNRRS was briefly on hiatus from 1936 to 1940 during the government of the Union Nationale . It was resumed by the new provincial Liberal government in 1940, after which the final feu-duties were paid in November 1940. Compared to

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2912-633: Was later renamed Fort Sorel. Saurel wintered at the fort, and foreseeing future settlement, had his men clear a large amount of the surrounding forest. In July 1666, the Lieutenant Général of the Americas, Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy , ordered Saurel to lead a punitive expedition against the Mohawk in retaliation for an attack against a hunting party on Isle La Motte that killed seven soldiers and captured four including Tracy's cousin, Lieutenant Louis de Canchy de Lerole. Two days away from

2968-458: Was not at all based on market forces (as land was plentiful and labor was not), but rather a system institutionalized by the crown. Villein socagers were able to divide their land for their children according to the Custom of Paris once they had families of their own, meaning that in the event of the death of a spouse, half the estate went to the surviving spouse, with the other half divided among

3024-522: Was one where both parties were owners of the land, who split the attributes of ownership between them. Estates in free socage were the most macro-level of land division in New France but, within them, there existed several tenurial subdivisions. Immediately below the level of free socage was that of the villeinage ( roture ). Throughout New France, several thousand estates in villeinage were developed. Furthermore, these villein tenancies were remarkably uniform in terms of size. Barring extreme cases, it

3080-404: Was tasked with rebuilding of Fort Richelieu . A fort at the confluence of the Richelieu River and the St. Lawrence River had been built in 1641 by Charles Huault de Montmagny but had been abandoned in 1646 and burned by the Mohawk in 1647. Fort Richelieu was one of five forts constructed by the Carignan-Salières astride the route that the Mohawk used to attack settlements on the St. Lawrence. It

3136-583: Was to be developed there. In September 2014, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld a Superior Court ruling that private ownership of the bed of a lake and related fishing rights were not conferred by the terms of a 1674 deed of feoffment creating the Manor of La Petite-Nation . The work of the SNRRS can be evaluated by reviewing the fonds given in 1975 by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs (which looked after

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