USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The seigneur had to have a manor house built on the seigneurie and to live in it. He was also responsible for building and maintaining a wheat mill. The habitants, for their part, had to pay the seigneur taxes called “cens” – giving rise to the term “censitaire” applied to them – and rent, in money or farm products.

Detailed explanation-2: -The “seigneurial system” is a scholarly contrivance rather than a found object. Absolutist France established seigneurialism in Canada through the 1627 Charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates and the legal code of the Coutûme de Paris.

Detailed explanation-3: -The seigneurs were nobles, merchants or religious congregations, who had been granted a fief by the French crown, with all its associated rights over person and property. The seigneurie, or seigniory, (a large piece of land) was granted by the Governor and the Intendant.

Detailed explanation-4: -A person who owned a seigneury was called a seigneur. The seigneur divided his seigneury into smaller strips of land and rented them out to farmers. These farmers were known as habitants. One end of a habitant’s strip of land usually ended at a river.