ABSTRACT
The noble imprint on the landscape remained through much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; nobles continued to expect a range of obligations from their peasant tenants; and dozens of sieurs continue to be evidenced. Nevertheless one cannot escape a sense that by 1750 the nobility was not quite what it had been in 1550. Seventeenth-century records continue to note the obligations of obedience, corporal residence and using the seigneur’s mill; if anything, there is even more emphasis on the lordly monopoly of milling than there had been in the sixteenth century. They also note days of harvest work due from tenants. However, while harvest days continue, obedience, corporal residence and milling fade from the records in the eighteenth century: the ancient bases of tenancy were shifting.
