Not an Easy Thing, Being a Seigneur…

Did Romain Becquet suspect the burdens that awaited him when he came to New France? He filled his role as royal notary well. As for developing the seigneury (seigneurie, a landed estate held under the seigneurial regime) that had been granted to him, it was a failure; for want of improving it, his seigneurial holding was taken back from him. When he died at Québec on 20 April 1682, he left two young orphan girls.

It was Catherine-Angélique, born on 20 April 1680, who would inherit the seigneury; she was one of the daughters of Romain Becquet, and Louise Mousseau, wife of Pierre Pellerin, served as her guardian. She married Louis Lévrard in 1703, and the Lévrard-Becquet couple would carry on what Gilles Masson of Batiscan had already begun in the development of the seigneury of St-Pierre. Indeed, in the contracts of the day, Masson identifies himself as « seigneur de St-Pierre, accordant des terres » [seigneur of St-Pierre, granting lands]; since there was no seigneur present at St-Pierre, he might as well take advantage of it, all the more so because the clearing of the north shore of the St. Lawrence, at Batiscan among other places, was well along.

The first task of the Lévrard-Becquet couple would be to recover the official title of seigneur, and this through an ordinance handed down by sieur Raudot on 9 March 1708, « condamnant Gilles Masson et Jeanne Gauthier, son épouse, à déguerpir de la terre, fief, seigneurie de St-Pierre » [ordering Gilles Masson and Jeanne Gauthier, his wife, to quit the land, fief and seigneury of St-Pierre]. Terms would have to be reached with Masson and with the owners of the lands he had granted and to whom they paid cens et rentes (the annual seigneurial dues). But those owners had done practically no clearing, most of them living not in the Lévrard seigneury but at Batiscan, keeping no hearth and home at St-Pierre. The chief reason the inhabitants gave was that there was no mill.

So, in 1717, Lévrard had a mill built « afin de faciliter l’établissement dans la seigneurie » [in order to make settlement in the seigneury easier]. It would be built on the first parcel, lot 1 of the seigneury, the lot adjoining the seigneury of Deschaillons. Raised on an arm of the rivière Duchêne, on a piece of land 8 arpents wide at the front, it was « un moulin faisant farine, construit en bois, de 30 pieds de long sur 24 de large, sans aucune terre labourable ni prairie » [a flour mill, built of wood, 30 feet long by 24 wide, with no arable land or meadow at all].

That land had already been granted by Masson to two men named Massicot and Carignan. In 1723 they asked the intendant Michel Bégon that sieur Lévrard be ordered to give them back their land, which in their view « le sieur Lévrard s’est emparé, sans leur consentement, pour y construire son moulin, et de leur restituer les rentes des terres depuis qu’il s’en est mis en possession. » [sieur Lévrard seized, without their consent, to build his mill there, and that he restore to them the rents of the lands from the time he took possession of them.]

In his defence, sieur Lévrard said « qu’il a fait bâtir un moulin en 1717 pour faciliter l’établissement dans la seigneurie et que ce moulin est en bon état et qu’il souffre un tort considérable du fait que les concessionnaires n’y tiennent point feu et lieu (…) et ne trouvant point de lieu plus convenable pour placer le moulin que sur la terre des Massicot et Carignan, sur laquelle ils n’avaient fait aucun désert (défrichage), il a été obligé pour l’utilité publique d’y établir son moulin comme le lieu le plus propre de la seigneurie » [in substance: he built the mill in 1717 to ease settlement, it is in good repair, and the grantees’ failure to keep hearth and home harms him; finding no fitter site than the uncleared land of Massicot and Carignan, he was obliged, for the public good, to build there].

Bégon would decide the matter: he ordered sieur Lévrard of St-Pierre to repay the cens et rentes on the lands where he had set up his mill, and to make new grants in whatever place the owners of the mill lands should choose within three months, those owners being required to keep hearth and home there.

Several of Bégon’s ordinances would be posted at the door of the parish church of Batiscan (1708, 1718, 1721…) requiring the inhabitants to keep hearth and home on the lands granted to them, failing which sieur Lévrard would reunite those lands with his domain in order to grant them to other inhabitants.

In 1727, ten years after setting up his mill, sieur Lévrard complained once again « que les habitants ne tiennent point feu et lieu quoiqu’ils en soient obligés par leur contrat, jouissent depuis longtemps des terres sans y être établis et sans y avoir fait aucun travaux ou du moins peu de chose, leur intention étant seulement d’en détériorer le bois (…) ce qui met hors d’état d’entretenir le moulin qu’il a fait bâtir et qui lui coûte plus de 15000 livres et lui cause la ruine totale, ne tirant aucune utilité de ses travaux sur cette seigneurie, faute par les habitants de s’y être établi » [in substance: the inhabitants keep no hearth and home though bound to, have long enjoyed the lands without settling or improving them, meaning only to strip the woodland, which leaves him unable to maintain the mill — more than 15,000 livres spent, and his utter ruin].

Louis Lévrard died on 1 January 1747, leaving the seigneury to his son Charles.

Jocelyne Lafond