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gwydionI've been meaning to write this for a while, but recent things make it more pressing.
The word Serf comes from Servus, which literally means slave. Basically, as the Roman empire went into it's final decline, owners of latifunda with slaves slowly evolved into lords. The word servus gradually became serf, and instead of the slaves being partible, they became tied to the land. Quite literally, patches of land became designated free or unfree. In a lot of places, a free peasant could become a serf by knowingly or unknowingly taking over tenancy of unfree land, even if they also held free tenancy and their ancestors were free as long as they could remember.
This process happened all over ex-roman lands. Italy ended up devided iinto city states with sections under various law codes depending on who invaded where and when. It's a whole kettle of worms I do not want to get into. Spain was under Visgoth law, then held by the Muslims, the reconquered mostly by the French with help from younger sons from all over Europe. the result was a separate and fascinated law code with mixed elements and some special innovations. I've written about some of these before in areas like inheritance and sexual assault law. What would one day be Germany became the city states of the HRE, broadly under Germanic law, with some innovations and importations from the west. France ended up with a mixed roman and Germanic system with a strong nobility, a weak centralized government, and a lot both free and unfree peasants. The English got a strong monarchy, a medium strength nobility, and a mix of free and unfree peasants. No really. I know this sounds backwards, but bear with me. The French and English government evolution goes in opposite directions up until the french revolution.
Anyway this distinction between free and unfree land is why court rolls mattered so much to English and French peasants. If it could be proved you or anyone in your lineage ever paid rent on unfree land, you lost your freedom. As a result, whenever their was a peasant revolt, the first thing they'd do is behead any seneshal, noble, or tax collector they could get their hands on and burn the court Rolls. Court rolls held information about rents, fines, and taxes. Court rolls were the only way to prove who was and wasn't a serf. If you burn the rolls, you suddenly became free to leave the estate for another estate or a town, where you could seek higher wages, better conditions, or a free tenancy. You would no longer owe uncompensated labor to the lord, and could pay rent, taxes, and fines entirely in money and/or kind instead of a mix. you would no longer need the lord's permission to marry or inherit tenancy.
The way the English system developed, you start out with a strong centralized government under William the conqueror and his sons. over the course of time, you got some weak monarchs and some civil wars, which had the effect of strengthening the nobility in their struggles for power with the crown. The Magna Carta of 1215 only guarantees the rights of the nobles vs. the English monarchy. Even though we talk about it as if it guarantees everyone's basic rights, it did not in any way protect commoners from the nobles or the crown.
What happened is from the mid-14th century on the plague related labour shortages led to increasing pressure from below to end serfdom, improve wages and conditions, etc.. At the same time, the financial needs for fighting the hundred Years War led to increased need for taxation, which in turn put pressure on the government to increase representation of commoners. The late Medieval commons was made up of upper middle class guild heads, mayors, upper peasants, and the like who rubber stamped decisions by crown and Lords. The idea was that having commoners rubber stamp decisions made commoners in general feel included which made taxation and other decisions more powerful. Having a village notable explain why the tax was needed rather than a noble, made uprisings like the Great Peasants Revolt of 1381 less likely to repeat.
By the way, even though Richard II convinced the Peasants to disburse rather than occupy London, and several leaders were executed, the Peasants really won. Richard quietly removed most of the laws regarding unfree land, thus quietly abolishing serfdom, so that there were virtually no unfree peasants in England by 1400. Over the following centuries, various civil and overseas wars only increased the need for some sort of more regular taxation system, and thus the power of parliament. In the 1400's the need for more knights both for military service and as a tax bracket was so pressing that people with 50£ in land or goods were being rounded up and forceably knighted and people developed all sorts of dodges to avoid a knighting. No really. Meanwhile, as pre-existing nobles were heavily invested in land, which the plague centuries rendered less profitable, their monitary worth went down as a group, even as merchants, lawyers, guild masters etc. were on the way up fiscally. Marriages between titles and capital became more and more common from the late 14th through the 17th centuries. Between the mortality of civil wars, squabbles overseas, and the continuing rounds of epidemic disease, there ended up being a surprising amount of upward mobility. The line between what we would consider the middle class and the lower gentry got extremely blurry.
The house of Commons was the political beneficiary of this in the long run. From a nearly powerless rubber stamp department, they gradually got more and more say. Various monarchs made alliances with the commons against factions in the house of lords. Various factions in the house of lords made alliances with the commons at other times. The Commons started being a power broker. At the same time the village notables started being more and more entangled with the gentry through blood lines or elevation, raising the prestige of the lower house. This is why you see 18th and 19th century younger sons of nobles running for seats in the commons. As the House of Commons grew gradually more powerful, the power of the monarch and the nobles became more and more constrained, until eventually you get the modern system we all recognize with a vestigial royal family and the multi-party republic still calling itself a constitutional monarchy. It happened so gradually over the centuries, that it mostly wasn't noticed.
Meanwhile the French when the opposite way. The constant English invasions in the course of the hundred years war forced the french to go from extremely powerful nobles and a very weakl monarch, to a strongly centralized political system under an absolutish monarch. The financial exigencies of endlessly fighting off the English required a surprisingly modern tax system with regular collection. They couldn't muddle on with the English system of periodically voting another round of taxes on the wealthy and middle class. No, they needed a constant revenue stream. They responded to the plague centuries and English army chevauchée related depopulation with the opposite strategy than the English used with their depopulation. Admittedly both governments started out with extreme repression of the peasants and yet more restrictive laws and price caps, but while the English gave up on that after 1381 and shifted to a more free market approach to the labour shortage, the French went with crushing the peasants so hard they were too busy surviving to mount more than the occasional rebellion. Because the nobbles started out so strong compared to the crown at the start of the 1300's, when the new tax laws got passed, the nobles were able to exempt themselves from monetary taxation, though they retained the old Germanic code duty of military service./ While the English were going with a progressive tax system that meant the more you had the more you paid, the french went with the a regressive tax that was harshest on those who had the least. This process continued, with the nobles and the crown struggling over control. When there was a weak king, the nobles would grow in power; when there was a strong king, he'd grab the power right back.
By the time Louis XIV ascends the throne in 1643, the lack of noble taxation was a major problem. Not only was it an issue for state coffers, but lots of bored, wealthy, nobles is always a civil war risk. Indeed, as Louis inherited the throne as a child, there was a bit of a power vacuum and the Fronde civil war. It is thought his childhood experience of being forced to flee Paris during the noble revolt played a big part in his actions after he began to reign in his own right. In the course of his reign, he drew the upper nobility to his brilliant and expensive court. Keeping up with the fashions, gifts, and gambling debts became a major drain on the funds of the nobles. The King found more and more ways to keep them close and dependent, occupying them with sexual intrigues and entertainments to distract them from political plotting. The problem is, that this was expensive for the crown as well. The building and upkeep of Versailles alone was a huge expense. Add in the price of the clothes, the jewels, the furniture, the horses, the entertainments, the art, the gardens, the secondary palaces.... you get the idea. Imprisoning Fouchet and taking all his stuff helped in the beginning, but he lived nearly a century, and there was that big war with Spain/HRE and other smaller squabbles. It all took money and by the 18th century, coffers were empty, and the lifestyle was extravagant. Add to this that Louis XIV married his mother's niece, and they were both heavily inbred Habsburgs. After the Sun king, the blood line dramatically disintegrated under the weight of it's own inbreeding. You can argue both ways about Louis XIV's policies and their long and short term wisdom, but he was intelligent and an able politician.
After him came kings who were neither. His successor was an intellectually challenged rapist, for example. It only went downhill from there. Meanwhile the financial, political, and military pressures only became more overwhelming, and the only people with the poer to solve any of those problems were either unwilling or unable. For example, the obvious solution tto the financial situation would be to start taxiing the nobles, preferably in proportion to their wealth, but as the king was unable to understand the problem, let alone impose a solution, and the nobles had no interest whatsoever in taxing themselves, they shifted more and more burden onto the commoners, steadily dismantling the middle class and constantly wide3ning the gap between the nobles and everyone else. By the time you get to poor, pathetic Louis XVI, who if he were a modern school boy would have been assigned a personal aid and life skills classes, because he was too inbred and mentally challenged to make basic decisions or take care of himself on a day to day level, the political and economic situation was utterly untenable. eventually, the nobles decided to make a play to take over the government entirely, but rapidly lost control, as once they started the rebellion, the people who'd been suffering from literally centuries of pretty much unbearable oppression while commoner neighbors in HRE and the low countries were experiencing a much larger degree of freedom and autonomy. the shredded remains of the middle classes moved in to lead the rest of the populous in a much more radical revolution that involved the rounding up of nobles for the guillotine. then they lost control, and the Revolution got wilder and wilder, consuming all sorts of people for small crimes, perceived dissent, or hoarding.
It is my belief that the English abolishing serfdom early and gradually increasing political representation of commoners over time is why they didn't have something like the French revolution. You keep pressing down on a population like that and there is bound to be a backlash. The longer and harder the oppression, the more violent and out of control that response would be.
Yes, I do think this is very pertinent. In my lifetime, I've seen the tax burden shift down the income scale as the system became more and more regressive, and have watched the income gap between the rich and everyone else widen dramatically, and the laws protecting workers and middle class from the rich gradually weakened. When I see this push to weaken or outlaw unions; when I see large scale disenfranchisement of the poor, POc, and elderly; when I see plans to remove safety regulations, minimum wage, and child labour laws, I get scared. I know where this ends up, and I'd rather we don't do that.
The word Serf comes from Servus, which literally means slave. Basically, as the Roman empire went into it's final decline, owners of latifunda with slaves slowly evolved into lords. The word servus gradually became serf, and instead of the slaves being partible, they became tied to the land. Quite literally, patches of land became designated free or unfree. In a lot of places, a free peasant could become a serf by knowingly or unknowingly taking over tenancy of unfree land, even if they also held free tenancy and their ancestors were free as long as they could remember.
This process happened all over ex-roman lands. Italy ended up devided iinto city states with sections under various law codes depending on who invaded where and when. It's a whole kettle of worms I do not want to get into. Spain was under Visgoth law, then held by the Muslims, the reconquered mostly by the French with help from younger sons from all over Europe. the result was a separate and fascinated law code with mixed elements and some special innovations. I've written about some of these before in areas like inheritance and sexual assault law. What would one day be Germany became the city states of the HRE, broadly under Germanic law, with some innovations and importations from the west. France ended up with a mixed roman and Germanic system with a strong nobility, a weak centralized government, and a lot both free and unfree peasants. The English got a strong monarchy, a medium strength nobility, and a mix of free and unfree peasants. No really. I know this sounds backwards, but bear with me. The French and English government evolution goes in opposite directions up until the french revolution.
Anyway this distinction between free and unfree land is why court rolls mattered so much to English and French peasants. If it could be proved you or anyone in your lineage ever paid rent on unfree land, you lost your freedom. As a result, whenever their was a peasant revolt, the first thing they'd do is behead any seneshal, noble, or tax collector they could get their hands on and burn the court Rolls. Court rolls held information about rents, fines, and taxes. Court rolls were the only way to prove who was and wasn't a serf. If you burn the rolls, you suddenly became free to leave the estate for another estate or a town, where you could seek higher wages, better conditions, or a free tenancy. You would no longer owe uncompensated labor to the lord, and could pay rent, taxes, and fines entirely in money and/or kind instead of a mix. you would no longer need the lord's permission to marry or inherit tenancy.
The way the English system developed, you start out with a strong centralized government under William the conqueror and his sons. over the course of time, you got some weak monarchs and some civil wars, which had the effect of strengthening the nobility in their struggles for power with the crown. The Magna Carta of 1215 only guarantees the rights of the nobles vs. the English monarchy. Even though we talk about it as if it guarantees everyone's basic rights, it did not in any way protect commoners from the nobles or the crown.
What happened is from the mid-14th century on the plague related labour shortages led to increasing pressure from below to end serfdom, improve wages and conditions, etc.. At the same time, the financial needs for fighting the hundred Years War led to increased need for taxation, which in turn put pressure on the government to increase representation of commoners. The late Medieval commons was made up of upper middle class guild heads, mayors, upper peasants, and the like who rubber stamped decisions by crown and Lords. The idea was that having commoners rubber stamp decisions made commoners in general feel included which made taxation and other decisions more powerful. Having a village notable explain why the tax was needed rather than a noble, made uprisings like the Great Peasants Revolt of 1381 less likely to repeat.
By the way, even though Richard II convinced the Peasants to disburse rather than occupy London, and several leaders were executed, the Peasants really won. Richard quietly removed most of the laws regarding unfree land, thus quietly abolishing serfdom, so that there were virtually no unfree peasants in England by 1400. Over the following centuries, various civil and overseas wars only increased the need for some sort of more regular taxation system, and thus the power of parliament. In the 1400's the need for more knights both for military service and as a tax bracket was so pressing that people with 50£ in land or goods were being rounded up and forceably knighted and people developed all sorts of dodges to avoid a knighting. No really. Meanwhile, as pre-existing nobles were heavily invested in land, which the plague centuries rendered less profitable, their monitary worth went down as a group, even as merchants, lawyers, guild masters etc. were on the way up fiscally. Marriages between titles and capital became more and more common from the late 14th through the 17th centuries. Between the mortality of civil wars, squabbles overseas, and the continuing rounds of epidemic disease, there ended up being a surprising amount of upward mobility. The line between what we would consider the middle class and the lower gentry got extremely blurry.
The house of Commons was the political beneficiary of this in the long run. From a nearly powerless rubber stamp department, they gradually got more and more say. Various monarchs made alliances with the commons against factions in the house of lords. Various factions in the house of lords made alliances with the commons at other times. The Commons started being a power broker. At the same time the village notables started being more and more entangled with the gentry through blood lines or elevation, raising the prestige of the lower house. This is why you see 18th and 19th century younger sons of nobles running for seats in the commons. As the House of Commons grew gradually more powerful, the power of the monarch and the nobles became more and more constrained, until eventually you get the modern system we all recognize with a vestigial royal family and the multi-party republic still calling itself a constitutional monarchy. It happened so gradually over the centuries, that it mostly wasn't noticed.
Meanwhile the French when the opposite way. The constant English invasions in the course of the hundred years war forced the french to go from extremely powerful nobles and a very weakl monarch, to a strongly centralized political system under an absolutish monarch. The financial exigencies of endlessly fighting off the English required a surprisingly modern tax system with regular collection. They couldn't muddle on with the English system of periodically voting another round of taxes on the wealthy and middle class. No, they needed a constant revenue stream. They responded to the plague centuries and English army chevauchée related depopulation with the opposite strategy than the English used with their depopulation. Admittedly both governments started out with extreme repression of the peasants and yet more restrictive laws and price caps, but while the English gave up on that after 1381 and shifted to a more free market approach to the labour shortage, the French went with crushing the peasants so hard they were too busy surviving to mount more than the occasional rebellion. Because the nobbles started out so strong compared to the crown at the start of the 1300's, when the new tax laws got passed, the nobles were able to exempt themselves from monetary taxation, though they retained the old Germanic code duty of military service./ While the English were going with a progressive tax system that meant the more you had the more you paid, the french went with the a regressive tax that was harshest on those who had the least. This process continued, with the nobles and the crown struggling over control. When there was a weak king, the nobles would grow in power; when there was a strong king, he'd grab the power right back.
By the time Louis XIV ascends the throne in 1643, the lack of noble taxation was a major problem. Not only was it an issue for state coffers, but lots of bored, wealthy, nobles is always a civil war risk. Indeed, as Louis inherited the throne as a child, there was a bit of a power vacuum and the Fronde civil war. It is thought his childhood experience of being forced to flee Paris during the noble revolt played a big part in his actions after he began to reign in his own right. In the course of his reign, he drew the upper nobility to his brilliant and expensive court. Keeping up with the fashions, gifts, and gambling debts became a major drain on the funds of the nobles. The King found more and more ways to keep them close and dependent, occupying them with sexual intrigues and entertainments to distract them from political plotting. The problem is, that this was expensive for the crown as well. The building and upkeep of Versailles alone was a huge expense. Add in the price of the clothes, the jewels, the furniture, the horses, the entertainments, the art, the gardens, the secondary palaces.... you get the idea. Imprisoning Fouchet and taking all his stuff helped in the beginning, but he lived nearly a century, and there was that big war with Spain/HRE and other smaller squabbles. It all took money and by the 18th century, coffers were empty, and the lifestyle was extravagant. Add to this that Louis XIV married his mother's niece, and they were both heavily inbred Habsburgs. After the Sun king, the blood line dramatically disintegrated under the weight of it's own inbreeding. You can argue both ways about Louis XIV's policies and their long and short term wisdom, but he was intelligent and an able politician.
After him came kings who were neither. His successor was an intellectually challenged rapist, for example. It only went downhill from there. Meanwhile the financial, political, and military pressures only became more overwhelming, and the only people with the poer to solve any of those problems were either unwilling or unable. For example, the obvious solution tto the financial situation would be to start taxiing the nobles, preferably in proportion to their wealth, but as the king was unable to understand the problem, let alone impose a solution, and the nobles had no interest whatsoever in taxing themselves, they shifted more and more burden onto the commoners, steadily dismantling the middle class and constantly wide3ning the gap between the nobles and everyone else. By the time you get to poor, pathetic Louis XVI, who if he were a modern school boy would have been assigned a personal aid and life skills classes, because he was too inbred and mentally challenged to make basic decisions or take care of himself on a day to day level, the political and economic situation was utterly untenable. eventually, the nobles decided to make a play to take over the government entirely, but rapidly lost control, as once they started the rebellion, the people who'd been suffering from literally centuries of pretty much unbearable oppression while commoner neighbors in HRE and the low countries were experiencing a much larger degree of freedom and autonomy. the shredded remains of the middle classes moved in to lead the rest of the populous in a much more radical revolution that involved the rounding up of nobles for the guillotine. then they lost control, and the Revolution got wilder and wilder, consuming all sorts of people for small crimes, perceived dissent, or hoarding.
It is my belief that the English abolishing serfdom early and gradually increasing political representation of commoners over time is why they didn't have something like the French revolution. You keep pressing down on a population like that and there is bound to be a backlash. The longer and harder the oppression, the more violent and out of control that response would be.
Yes, I do think this is very pertinent. In my lifetime, I've seen the tax burden shift down the income scale as the system became more and more regressive, and have watched the income gap between the rich and everyone else widen dramatically, and the laws protecting workers and middle class from the rich gradually weakened. When I see this push to weaken or outlaw unions; when I see large scale disenfranchisement of the poor, POc, and elderly; when I see plans to remove safety regulations, minimum wage, and child labour laws, I get scared. I know where this ends up, and I'd rather we don't do that.