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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part 1 Seigneurial Justice in Practice
- Part 2 The Winds of Change
- Conclusion: Lords, Judges, and the Self-Regulating Village
- Appendix A Police Regulations from the Assizes during the 1780s
- Appendix B Class Justice? Statistical Tests
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion: Lords, Judges, and the Self-Regulating Village
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part 1 Seigneurial Justice in Practice
- Part 2 The Winds of Change
- Conclusion: Lords, Judges, and the Self-Regulating Village
- Appendix A Police Regulations from the Assizes during the 1780s
- Appendix B Class Justice? Statistical Tests
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Seigneurial courts functioned as the lowest rung of the state structure in eighteenth-century northern Burgundy. A primary responsibility of the institution was to see to the enforcement of royal edicts and parlementary general arrêts, which is why the Parlement of Dijon ordered seigneurial judges to read aloud in the village royal edicts it registered and general arrêts it issued that affected village life. The village community was subject to the watchful eye of the seigneurial judge on a regular basis. Local judges oversaw tax collection in the village, both through their influence over the nomination of assessors and collectors and by hearing cases when individuals challenged their taille assessments. The local seigneurial court was the institution of the state that was closest to the village, and ordinary people had contact with the seigneurial judge far more frequently than with royal judges, the intendant and his subdelegates, the Waters and Forests court, the élus of the provincial Estates, or even the royal tax collection officers. Ordinary people appreciated the seigneurial judge's intervention more than that of the other institutions, which came under attack more often and more aggressively than seigneurial justice in the parish cahiers de doléances.
The relative popularity of seigneurial justice compared to all other institutions of the central state points to the main theme of this book, namely that seigneurial justice functioned effectively to allow village communities to regulate themselves.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Enlightened FeudalismSeigneurial Justice and Village Society in Eighteenth-Century Northern Burgundy, pp. 211 - 218Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008