FWO-proposal ‘Peasants into Stewards’: Overview sources
1. Short note
Due to the current Corona-pandemic, access to the archives was limited, especially to those in the Netherlands and Northern France. Because of this, and due to time-constraints, most of this preliminary research was accomplished by consulting the websites of the archives and published and/or digital inventories, summary lists (regestenlijsten), published cartularies and secondary literature on the regions, organisations, institutions etc. The number of available sources is split up per ‘province’ and per ‘actor’. The former is based on the current location of the archival collections, whilst the latter is based on the collection the cartulary was found in. As there is the possibility that some cartularies have been preserved by both the beneficiary and the issuer, there remains a chance that some contracts have been counted twice.
2. Overview available lease-contracts a. The Netherlands
For the Netherlands, I have benefited from the excellent availability of digital inventories and even summary lists of the content of cartularies from many institutions on the websites of the official archives (state, regional and municipal). Thanks to this, I managed to count the available sources per province. The amount of online data also made it possible to already distinguish between hereditary leases and short-term leases in some cases, although a margin of error remains, of course. As such, the exact amount might turn out lower. However, it might also be higher as not all inventories were made digital; so future investigation in the archives might unearth even more short-term leases. Small remark: the province of Flevoland is a ‘recent’ addition, existing mostly out of land reclaimed in the 1950’s, so no medieval sources exist for this province.
Table 1: Estimation of the available lease contracts in the Netherlands for the period 1200-1400: Province Nobility Clergy Urban actors Total Drenthe 0 13 0 13 Flevoland - - - - Friesland 0 3 0 3 Gelderland 26 22 27 75 Groningen 0 8 0 8 Limburg 0 30 0 30 North-Brabant 26 49 18 93 North Holland 46 55 5 106 Overijssel 2 11 5 17 South Holland 39 13 5 57 Utrecht 3 718 8 728 Zeeland 0 23 5 28 Total 945 143 72 1159
b. Belgium & Northern France
The inventories of both the state and municipal archives of Belgium are less accessible online. Because of this, I resorted to a different method to estimate the number of lease-contracts available. Using published and/or digital summary lists (regesten) of cartularies of several organisations, I calculated the average percentage of lease-contracts present in these cartularies for each kind of actor (noble family, abbey, church, charity, city, …). Following this, I estimated the number of cartularies preserved for this period, based on the available inventories of archives and secondary literature. The margin of error here is, of course, quite high. The results, however, do correspond with both the results for the Netherlands (ca. 1000 in Belgium vs. ca. 1000 in the Netherlands) and with the literature (few in Namur and Luxembourg vs. large concentration in the former county of Flanders and duchy of Brabant). The regions of the county of Artois, the bishopric Cambrésis and parts of the county of Flanders (French Flanders) and the county of Hainaut (region Valenciennes) nowadays are part of France, compromising the current departments ‘Nord’ and ‘Pas-de-Calais’. This region too suffered greatly during both World Wars, with many municipal archives destroyed (e.g. Cambrai, Arras, …) and part of the ‘state archive’ (Archives Départementales) of Pas-de-Calais lost to fire. Similarly, in Belgium too some important medieval archives have unfortunately been destroyed in previous wars (e.g. Ypres, Mons, Tournai, …)
Table 2: Estimation of the available lease contracts in Belgium and Northern France for the period 1200-1400: Province Clergy Nobility Urban actors Total Antwerp 44 0 3 47 Brussels 130 34 14 179 Hainaut 124 0 3 127 Limburg 40 2 0 43 Liège 78 10 0 88 Luxembourg 28 5 0 33 Namur 50 8 6 64 East Flanders 140 5 16 161 Flemish Brabant 118 1 12 131 Walloon Brabant 230 18 6 254 West Flanders 117 6 48 171 Dép. du Nord 286 10 108 405 Dép. du Pas-de-Calais 149 0 19 168 Total 1534 100 235 1869
c. Research project
As stated in the project outline, the proposed research project would focus on all the lease contract before 1340, complemented with representative samples of lease contracts for the period 1340-1400. The focus for the period after 1340 will be on the key regions: Flanders (incl. the districts Douai and Lille), Brabant, Holland, Utrecht and Cambrai.
For the period before 1340, around 1500 contracts are preserved:
Table 3: Estimation of the available lease contracts in Belgium, Northern France and the Netherlands for the period 1200-1340: Belgium & The Urban Urban Northern France Clergy Nobility Total Netherlands Clergy Nobility Total actors actors Province Province Antwerp 24 0 1 25 Drenthe 8 0 0 8 Brussels 73 14 5 92 Flevoland 0 0 0 0 Hainaut 69 0 1 70 Friesland 0 0 0 0 Limburg 22 1 0 23 Gelderland 13 11 9 32 Liège 44 4 0 48 Groningen 5 0 0 5 Luxembourg 16 2 0 18 Limburg 18 0 0 18 Namur 28 3 2 33 North 45 11 6 61 Brabant East Flanders 78 2 5 86 North 40 19 2 60 Holland Flemish Brabant 66 1 4 71 Overijssel 6 1 2 8 Walloon Brabant 129 8 2 138 South 14 16 0 29 Holland West Flanders 66 2 16 84 Utrecht 419 1 3 422 Département du 160 4 36 201 Zeeland 18 0 0 18 Nord Départment du 84 0 6 90 Pas-de-Calais Total 859 42 78 979 Total 585 56 21 661
For the period between 1340-1400, the selected regions offer about 1000 lease contracts:
Table 4: Estimation of the lease contracts in Belgium, Northern France and the Netherlands for the selected regions, 1340-1400: Belgium & The Urban Urban Northern France Clergy Nobility Total Netherlands Clergy Nobility Total actors actors Province Province Antwerp 24 0 1 22 North- 45 11 6 32 Brabant Brussels 73 14 5 87 North 40 19 2 46 Holland East Flanders 78 2 5 75 South 14 16 0 28 Holland Flemish Brabant 66 1 4 60 Utrecht 419 1 3 306 Walloon Brabant 129 8 2 116 West Flanders 66 2 16 87 Département du 160 4 36 204 Nord Total 859 42 78 650 Total 585 56 21 412 Remark: the archives of the Département du Nord contain those of Douai, Lille and Cambrai.