The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463-1666: Continuity Through Change

by James B. Wood

Overview

Reconstructing the collective experience of an entire provincial nobility over a period of more than two centuries, James Wood finds current theories about the early modernFrench nobility inadequate. Concentrating on socio-economic structures and changes, he analyzes the composition and way of life of all the nobles—poor and prosperous, obscure and notable—who lived in the election of Bayeux between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Combining a regional historical perspective with the methods of quantitative social history, Professor Wood demonstrates the broader significance of his findings for general historical interpretations of the nobility and of early modern France as well.

Originally published in 1980.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691643373
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #537
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463-1666

Continuity through Change

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By James B. Wood

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05294-6

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CHAPTER 1

DEFINING THE NOBILITY: THE RECHERCHES

The difficulties of finding adequate sources for social history in a prestatistical era like the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are well known. Comprehensive socioeconomic information was hardly ever systematically collected, and the few surviving sources are scattered and difficult to interpret. In the case of the nobility of the élection of Bayeux, however, this general rule does not apply. Starting in the middle of the fifteenth century, in response to the fiscal needs of the crown, royal officials began to conduct periodic recherches, or investigations of the nobility, in Lower Normandy. During the course of these recherches the crown adopted a clear legalistic definition of noble status, and over time the recherches developed into an effective institutional means of controlling membership in the nobility. The surviving records of these periodic inspections of noble credentials make it possible to study the changing social dimensions of the entire Bayeux nobility over a period of more than two centuries.

Since these investigations played an important part in shaping, and are the main source of information on, the membership of the Bayeux nobility, an understanding of how they were conducted and of their overall effectiveness is important. This chapter therefore will examine the structure, procedures, and standards of the noble recherches in some detail. It will show how this institution defined and regulated noble status in Lower Normandy from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century and analyze the cumulative effect of the recherches on the Bayeux nobility as a whole.

The élection of Bayeux belonged to the Lower Norman généralité (provincial administrative unit) of Caen. It contained 225 parishes, organized in nine sergeantries varying in size from 9 to 50 parishes, and covered an area of approximately 1,000 square kilometers. Triangular in shape, the élection's northern boundary ran for fifty kilometers along the English Channel between the Veys estuary and the mouth of the Seulles river, a coast made famous by the D-Day landings in 1944. The western boundary ran southward for some fifty-five kilometers, roughly paralleling the course of the Vire river, while the eastern boundary, following the Seulles much of the way, was about sixty kilometers long.

Like most of the rest of Lower Normandy, the élection of Bayeux was predominantly agricultural. Its northern half belonged to the rich Norman Bessin, now famous for its Isigny butter, while the southern half merged into the less prosperous Bocage. In 1713 the entire area supported 22,620 hearths (jeux), or somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. Bayeux, with approximately 6,000 inhabitants in the first half of the seventeenth century, was the only major city in the élection. Neither unusually prosperous nor unusually stagnant during this period, Bayeux was nevertheless an important secondary administrative center, being the seat of a vicomté and a diocese as well as of the élection. Like the rest of Lower Normandy, the area of the élection was free of the direct influence of any of the great urban centers, such as Paris, Rouen, or Lyons. The nearest major city, which lay thirty kilometers to the east, was Caen, the seat of the généralité and bailliage (bailiwick), and an important regional commercial center.

There were no special provisions for the nobles of the élection of Bayeux in the Norman customary laws. Like the rest of the Norman nobility, they had the right to wear swords and style themselves as écuyer or noble homme. Their legal cases were initiated directly at the bailliage rather than the vicomté level. They were exempted from the taille. In return for these privileges, they were required to live nobly and not pursue demeaning occupations such as manual labor or retail trade. They had to follow the strict Norman law of succession which excluded women and guaranteed at least two-thirds of the inheritance, with right of préciput (the privilege of first choice among fiefs), to the eldest son. If fief-holders, they were liable for all the customary feudal dues and obligations including attendance at the ban and arrière-ban musters and military service.

Since Normandy was the most heavily taxed province in France, and nobility brought exemption from the taille, regulation of the noble status of individuals in this area had been a constant concern of the crown and its local agents since the middle of the fifteenth century. As early as 1461, in the aftermath of the reconquest of the province from the English, and in response to widespread complaints about the usurpation of noble status, and therefore tax exemption, Louis XI had ordered a "general reformation" of the nobility of Normandy. This recherche was carried out in the nine élections of Lower Normandy under the direction of Raymond de Montfaut, bourgeois of Rouen and directeur général des monnaies in Normandy. In each élection lists were compiled of "persons who have been certified to be noble and extracted from noble line and certified to be such by the élus [heads of an élection] and officers for the aides and similarly by other persons of the locality and for this cause not to be subject to the taille." Lists were also kept of "other persons who claim to be nobles because of their wives, mothers, and noble fiefs which they have acquired, who otherwise would have to be subject to the taille according to their wealth," persons, that is, "who have not been found to be nobles, to be subject to the taille by the report of officers and others."

Between 1461 and 1463, Montfaut certified a total of 1,024 individual male family heads as nobles in Lower Normandy, while rejecting 301 claims to noble status. Even before Montfaut's commission had finished its work Louis XI was deluged with complaints from those who felt that they had been unfairly treated by the recherche. For some time the custom in Normandy had been that a commoner who possessed a noble fief without challenge for forty years could claim noble status. Many whose nobility was challenged by Montfaut apparently belonged to this category of "people who claim to be nobles because of their wives, mothers, and noble fiefs which they have acquired, who otherwise would have to be subject to the taille," persons, in other words, whose ancestors had paid the taille, but who possessed a fief and had been living nobly for several generations.

Louis XI's response to these protests was to halt Montfaut's recherche before it reached Upper Normandy and to agree not to take official notice of the results of the commission's work in Lower Normandy. But protests flared up again in 1470 when, as a fiscal measure, Louis attempted to require many of those who in 1463 had claimed prescriptive noble status according to Norman custom, to pay a franc-fief tax (levied on commoners who held fiefs) on their fiefs. The Norman Estates remonstrated that this was contrary to the laws and customs of Normandy dating back to the original Norman charter. A compromise was reached between crown and province, which was embodied in the November 5, 1470 charte des francs-fiefs, a royal edict that, recognizing Norman practice, officially ennobled all commoners who had possessed noble fiefs for forty years in return for a collective payment of 47,250 livres tournois.

In typical Renaissance fashion, the Normans had been allowed to buy official recognition of a time-honored customary local practice. During 1470-71 royal commissioners of francs-fiefs et nouveaux acquêts certified all the families who came under the provisions of the edict, and later decisions of the Chambre des Comptes confirmed the right to nobility of any family who possessed a letter of certification from the commissioners or could prove that they had been in possession of a noble fief in 1470. The charte des francs-fiefs was periodically renewed by the crown until 1569. At that time it was abolished by Charles IX while the general practice of acquiring nobility through possession of a fief was also outlawed by article 258 of the 1579 Ordinance of Orleans, which stipulated that "roturiers and nonnobles buying noble fiefs will not for this be ennobled nor put in the rank and degree of nobles, whatever the revenue and value of the fiefs they have acquired may be."

The charte des francs-fiefs of 1470 marked the beginning of the end of an era for the Norman nobility. Their outraged reaction to the crown's attempt to regulate noble status for royal fiscal purposes forced the crown to certify retrospectively the local practice of customary prescription of noble status. But by purchasing official recognition of such past actions, the nobility also recognized that the crown now had the right to demand official certification by letters patent of a previously unquestioned method of becoming noble. And once its right to certify even the oldest of customary methods of ennoblement was established, it took the crown less than a century to take the next logical step and legally abolish customary prescription of noble status altogether. As far as Normandy was concerned, the retrospective ennoblement of fiefholders that the crown agreed to in 1470 marked the end of the period in which such prescriptions were legally acceptable.

Montfaut's recherche of 1461-1463 also marked the beginning of a new era of constant royal regulation of noble status in Lower Normandy. For Montfaut's much maligned investigation was only the first of a whole series of similar recherches undertaken by royal officials in Lower Normandy over the next two centuries: in 1523, 1540, 1555, 1576, 1598, 1624, 1634, 1641, 1655, and 1666. The 1598 and 1666 recherches, like that of 1463, covered all of Lower Normandy.

For the élection of Bayeux, copies have survived of the 1463, 1523,1540,1598,1624, and 1666 recherches. Norman antiquarians and genealogists have used these documents since the seventeenth century, but they have not been systematically exploited. Yet for the élection of Bayeux, the rest of Lower Normandy, and even other parts of France, such documents form the foundation of any quantitative study of the nobility. Those for a single locality like the élection of Bayeux can be combined to give a clear picture of the mechanisms that evolved to regulate noble status, the basis on which judgments about nobility were made, and the social contours and dimensions of the provincial nobility of Lower Normandy between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries.

Recherches for false nobles were fiscal devices intended to discover illegal usurpers of noble status and return them to the tax rolls. The 1540 recherche of nobles by the élus of the élection of Bayeux, for example, was directed at "noble persons engaged in acts derogating to nobility or those who abused the said privilege." The review of the exemptions and privileges of the nobility in 1598 was part of a general règlement des tailles. The 1666 "investigation of usurpers of the title of nobility," a brainchild of Colbert, was also undertaken in order to return false nobles to the taille rolls. Since the recherches were undertaken for fiscal reasons and were often part of a general reformation of the taille rolls, the officials who directed them were drawn from the ranks of the crown's fiscal administration. Raymond de Montfaut, director of the first "general reformation" of nobles, it will be recalled, was a bourgeois of Rouen and directeur général des monnaies in Normandy, an office he had held under the English and been maintained in by Louis XI. The 1523 recherche was undertaken by the officers of the élection, while the 1540 recherche was directed by Guillaume Prud'homme, sieur of FontenayenBrye and counselor for finances, with the local king's attorney and the élus. The 1598 recherche, the first after Montfaut's to cover all of Lower Normandy, was directed by Jean-Jacques de Mesmes, chevalier, sieur of Roissy, a Parisian who was, successively, counselor at the Paris Parlement (1583), maître des requestes (1594), conseiller d'Etat (1600), des finances and des dépêches (1613), and finally "doyen des tous les conseils" (1642). Roissy was assisted by Jacques de Croixmare, seigneur of Saint Just and of Bosrots, counselor in the Cour des Aides at Rouen, from a native Rouennais family ennobled in 1370, and Michel de Repichon, seigneur d'Avenay, a 1587 anoblis who, starting out as secretary to Louis de Bourbon, prince of Conde, became a receveur général des finances (1574) and by 1598 royal counselor and trésorier général de France at the Bureau des finances at Caen. The 1624 recherche was directed by Mathieu Paris, intendant for the généralité of Caen, assisted by the officials of the Bureau des finances at Caen, while Guy Chamillart, director of the 1666 recherche, was also the intendant in the généralité of Caen, son of an advocate at the Paris Parlement and father of the more well known. Michel Chamillart, secrétaire d'Etat de la guerre.

While all the recherche commissions shared the common goal of discovering taxable mountebanks, their methods of operation differed. The 1540 recherche was conducted as a chevaunché, or visitation. In each parish the list of the exempted was examined and a procès-verbal held to determine the authenticity of the nobility of those families who claimed tax exemptions as nobles. In 1598 Roissy and his assistants traveled from one chef-lieu to the next, acting as a court to which the noble family heads of each élection had to submit proofs of their nobility. The commission arrived in the élection of Bayeux in late February 1599, and held hearings throughout the month of March, though many Bayeux nobles had previously appeared at the hearings held in neighboring St. Lô in December 1598, and January 1599. Chamillart in 1666 held his procès-verbal in the city of Bayeux, where he established a residence, and was assisted by a panel of four local gentlemen from extremely old families, one of whom, Michel Suhard, sieur of Loucelles, was also the king's advocate at Bayeux.

The recherche commissions had access to local parish, notary, and assize records and to taille rolls — all of which could be used to identify persons who had previously claimed tax exemptions as nobles or had used the quality of écuyer or noble homme in their legal records and contracts. In addition, the commissioners could refer to earlier investigations of individuals whose exemptions had been challenged by the local officials or contested by the parish in which they lived. In the élection of Bayeux alone, between 1460 and 1620, the Cour des Aides issued more than one hundred individual arrêts (decrees), unrelated to the recherches, confirming the nobility of local families. All of these cases involved long legal proceedings, some lasting for several generations. Finally, investigators had access to the records of previous recherche commissions. The records of the 1540 proceedings in the élection of Bayeux, for example, contain many references to the 1523 recherche, and Roissy in 1598 made many references to Montfaut's 1463 recherche. The 1624 commission referred back to 1523 and 1540, and Chamillart in 1666 used Montfaut extensively and referred to the recherches of 1576 and 1598.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463-1666 by James B. Wood. Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Tables, pg. ix
• List of Figures, pg. xi
• Acknowledgments, pg. xiii
• Introduction. A Historical Problem: The Early Modern Nobility, pg. 1
• Chapter I. Defining The Nobility: The Recherches, pg. 20
• Chapter II. The Membership of the Nobility: Size and Social Mobility, pg. 43
• Chapter III. Social Structure: Officials and Noblesse D'étpée, pg. 69
• Chapter IV. Marriage Patterns and Social Integration, pg. 99
• Chapter V. Income and Indebtedness, pg. 120
• Chapter VI. Landholdings and Bankruptcy Settlements, pg. 141
• Chapter VII. Conclusion: The Socioeconomic Basis Of Aristocratic Religious Activism, pg. 156
• Abbreviations, pg. 173
• Notes, pg. 175
• Bibliography, pg. 199
• Index, pg. 209