Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

A comparative analysis of concepts of property and property rights in Languedoc, Normandy and Burgundy in the late seventeenth century based on investigation of customs, legal commentaries, test cases, court cases, together with a selection of marriage contracts, wills, property transactions, government edicts and other decisions.

The aims were to (a) clarify an area of considerable confusion by elucidating the character and basis of French property rights (b) demonstrate that modern property rights and a sense of absolute property rights were less developed than is often suggested and that contemporaries (c) show that, despite differences in the customs of different regions and in their legal procedures, particularly between the customary north and the 'Roman' south, property relations and the strategies pursued within them were similar. A further, longer term objective is to use the material to illuminate the differing evolution and formation of English and French society by comparing the emergence of modern concepts of property rights in the two countries.


Main Topics:

Six datasets of material drawn from the Archives of the Departmentales of Seine Maritime (Rouen), Calvados (Caen), Cote dOr (Dijon), Tarn (Albi), Ariege (Foix) :
(1) 337 court procedings/sentences 1656-1690
(2) 203 marriage contracts 1667-1702 (1713,1818)
(3) 161 property transfers mostly sales, 1671-1700 (1639, 1660 1706, 1719)
(4) 98 wills, 1667-1702 (1719)
(5) 70 donations 1661-91 (1654, 1700)
(6) 28 amical agreements registered by lawyers (1670-1,1690,1693-4, 1721-2)

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.