Nobles and finance

Recent studies of the nobility have argued, based partly on assessments of their strong financial position, that this social group remained socially and politically influential during the early modern period. While it is true that there is a paucity of records that might offer a clear picture of nobles’ financial status, documentation of noble borrowing, or sales of seigniories, ‘does not necessarily mean that a noble lineage was on the verge of bankruptcy’. Noble revenue streams were often diverse (including non-landed investments and office-holding). In late medieval Franconia, the financial strength of the nobles led princes to grant them governorships in exchange for loans. Holders of such Pfandschaften might even include princely debt as part of their daughters’ dowries, thereby binding their heirs to the princely state over which they could continue to exert significant influence. The active engagement of the early modern nobility in financial activities naturally extended into other dimensions of their lives. In France, nobles ‘used complex investment and fiscal strategies to manage large monetary fortunes’, navigating exchange rates, making investments, engaging in commerce, and borrowing from and lending to clients, other nobles, and the Crown. Marriage strategy and kin relations included important financial components. Heads of families assumed debt in order to provide dowries for daughters, and they also ‘depended on the financial support and decision making of their allies, and especially on the contributions of “houses” that had died out’. Language relating to finance also colored relationships between nobles.