Lords, Peasantries and the remuneration of labour services in the Southern Low Countries, 13th-18th centuries

From Firenze University Press Book: Alternative currencies. Commodities and services as exchange currencies in the monetarized economies of the 13th to 18th centuries

Thijs Lambrecht, Ghent University, Belgium

Joke Verfaillie, Ghent University, Belgium

Tom de Waele, Ghent University, Belgium

The privilege of the lord to demand servile works from his subjects is often considered one of the hallmarks of lordship in the past.1 The right to such corvées is often portrayed as a form of pure surplus extraction from which no other party except the lord benefited. In theory, the rights of the lord to command such works lasted until the end of the Ancien Régime. In the southern Low Countries, servile works were officially abolished in 1795 when French revolutionary legislation was implemented. However, many historians have shown that during the late middle ages the power of the lord to command such works had already weakened substantially. In the early modern period, only a minority of lords could still command free labour from their subjects. By the late medieval period, the labour market was freed from any feudal or seigniorial constraints (de Vries 1992, 56). A survey executed in the Duchy of Brabant in 1753, for example, shows that only seven percent of the seigneuries could claim servile works. At that time, servile works had become the exception and only a small minority of the population was subject to labour services (Scheelings 1990, 197–99). Therefore, the economic importance of servile labour during the late medieval and early modern period was probably negligible. There are many reasons why the right to servile works of the lords weakened during the late middle ages. When lords progressively abandoned direct exploitation of their demesnes, such servile works became useless. Also, there are many indications that the quality and speed of the work executed by seigneurial subjects was inferior to waged labour. The right of the lord to command such works was also increasingly curtailed by territorial rulers and states. In the second half of the fourteenth century, the count of Flanders actively halted aggressive lords who tried to impose or extend seigneurial rights (De Waele 2022). With particular reference to labour services the duke of Brabant enacted restrictions at the start of the fifteenth century (Willems 1843, 720–21). Next to these general measures, territorial rulers also intervened in local conflicts to protect peasantries from aggressive lords trying to extort free labour from their subjects. In 1431, for example, Philip the Good forbade the lord of Valkenburg to exact labour services from the inhabitants of Oud-Valkenburg (Janssen de Limpens 1977, 635–36). As in early modern France, the central government in the Southern Low Countries also shielded rural communities from heavy labour services imposed by local lords (for France see Gransagne 2015). In the second half of the seventeenth century in particular, the central government of the Spanish Netherlands intervened to limit the exactions of lords. The possession of a seigneury as such did not entitle lords to labour services. Servile works could only be demanded if they were included in the description of the seigneury (Reglement 1672, art. 54). An instruction from 1700 even stated that only lords that possessed specific legal titles relating to labour services could command such works. Such state interventions limited the options of the lord to demand labour services. This paper does not dispute the claim that labour services were gradually eroded and even disappeared in most seigneuries during the late medieval and early modern period in the Southern Low Countries. However, in some seigneuries servile works persisted until the end of the eighteenth century. Lords aiming to safeguard their claim to servile works were obliged to maintain an impeccable administration of those customary services. This diligent record-keeping has resulted in the preservation of exceptional archival material. In this paper we turn our attention to a number of well-documented lordships where peasantries continued to execute servile works for the lord. As we will show, labour services in such communities survived because they were compensated by the lord. Peasantries agreed to work for the lord because they were remunerated for their work. By way of close reading of manorial customs and descriptions of lordly rights we are able to reconstruct these compensation mechanisms in some detail. Documentary sources such as manorial customs frequently record the rights of the lord in some detail. Such descriptions indicate that many lordly rights had been subject to negotiation and even compensation. For example, on certain days of the year, the inhabitants of Rahier had to hand over the morning milk produced by their cows. In exchange for the produce of their cows, the subjects of the lord of Rahier obtained the right to fish (with their hands or equipped with rods) in the water streams of the seigneury (Poncelet et. al. 1958, 281). This type of contractual exchange was typical of late medieval seigneuries. The lord received part of the produce of the peasantries and in exchange offered them use rights on his private properties. As we will show, the performance of servile works was often embedded in similar exchanges. The Belgian historian Léo Verriest concluded that labour services in late medieval and early modern Hainaut constituted an unpleasant burden imposed by the lordly class on the rural population (Verriest 1917, 228). He based this conclusion on a number of well-documented conflicts between lords and peasantries. To a large extent, such a view is shaped by the available documentation. The archival paper trail of peasants refusing to perform labour services is more elaborate than those faithfully meeting the labour demands of their lords. Resistance and refusal by peasantries are often much better documented than compliance and obedience. An analysis of the customs offers a more nuanced and representative picture of peasant-lord relations in the past. Customs were the result and outcome of a bargaining process between lords and their subjects. Customs listed and described the rights and obligations of both lords and peasantries and therefore constitute the best source to reconstruct the realities of their relationship in the past. In this paper, we use the rich and detailed information embedded in the customs to reconstruct the relation between lords and peasantries through the lens of labour services. In the first section of the paper, we discuss the options of the rural populations to escape servile works by way of commutation. The second section of the paper focuses on the limitations imposed by custom on the mobilization and execution of servile works. The third part of the paper analyses the various ways through which seigneurial subjects were compensated and remunerated by their lords for the labour they supplied.

DOI: 10.36253/979–12–215–0347–0.09

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