ABSTRACT
On the other hand, the feudal lords, usually unversed in business affairs, had no idea of how to profit from the reclamation which was going on under their eyes, nor from the increased value of landed property and produce. In most cases they consented to the clearance of their land and the emancipation of their tenants, in return for the payment of rents or fixed dues. Frequently they even stipulated that these dues or cens should be partly paid in money, the value of which fell. To spare themselves the trouble of farming the land themselves, they willingly let out their demesnes at a rent, with the result that they sacrificed the future to the satisfaction of their present needs. In Normandy, for example, from the twelfth century, noble estates began to disappear, submerged beneath money rents, which in practice transferred them to the peasants. Indeed, wherever the urban bourgeoisie prevailed, a mortal war was waged against the feudatories and despoiled them of their possessions. The peasants, on their side, multiplied their attempts at usurpation and profited by the frequent disappearance of written title-deeds to legitimize their hold on seigniorial property, with the approval of the royal courts, especially in France. With the exception of England-where the gentry, ceasing to be a knightly class and amalgamating with the small freeholders, renounced the profession of arms in order to administer their own estates, and thus escaped povertythe mass of the nobles degenerated everywhere into a needy and sometimes starveling class, which possessed no more than a wretched remnant of the old seigniorial property, insufficient to support them.
