PART 2
7
Justine Firnhaber-Baker
The village of Saint-Leu d’Esserent, situated on the north bank of the Oise River about sixty kilometres from Paris, is a compact settlement of mostly stone buildings, dominated by a twelfth-century church built for the Cluniac monks who ruled the village as its lords. In the later Middle Ages, it served as a major crossing place on that river, probably by ferry, and as a fluvial port for a variety of goods, including the excellent limestone produced by its celebrated quarries and those of nearby settlements.2 For historians of medieval rural Europe, Saint-Leu is famous as the site of the first episode in the Jacquerie revolt, in which villagers from the surrounding countryside killed nine noblemen on 28 May 1358, setting off an uprising that came to engulf most of the Île-de-France, Picardy and regions beyond over the next month.3 This chapter, which focuses on a dispute between the villagers and the monks that began in 1326, is an effort to consider how villagers in northern France acted to pursue their self-interest in the decades before the Jacquerie, for we know surprisingly little about these communities and their politics prior to this massive upheaval.
The historiography of rural France: North and South
The Jacquerie appears in the historiography as if from nowhere. The revolt involved the mobilisation of thousands of villagers and provincial townspeople for the destruction of local castles and noble property, but there is little scholarship on the pre-existing ideas and practices that made such a mobilisation possible. In a brief article, Raymond Cazelles traced the social diversity of the ‘Jacques’ and their urban connections, and Samuel Cohn has noted evidence of a high level of organisation within the revolt.4 Marc Bloch’s French Rural History discusses peasant organisation and action, and there are some monographs and essay collections more broadly focused on rural European society that contain northern French material.5 But we have nothing like the extensive historiography on English peasant politics and socioeconomics that gives explanatory force to work on the English Rising of 1381.6 Nor, unlike for nearby Flanders, where a ‘tradition of revolt’ can be discerned both for the countryside and for its more famously rebellious towns, is there any obvious model to which historians can ascribe the actions of the rural people of the Oise River valley.7 There is no well-charted hinterland of political ideas, discourses, practices and traditions, out of which we can see the Jacquerie ‘naturally’ emerging.
One important resource is the magisterial works on regional societies produced by the old French doctoral regime, such as Guy Fourquin’s Les campagnes de la région Parisienne, Robert Fossier’s La terre et les hommes en Picardie and Brigitte Bedos’ La châtellenie de Montmorency,8 which build upon a wealth of aggregated data to construct a total picture of the societies to which they are dedicated. However, with the exception of Fossier’s book, whose coverage unfortunately ends at 1300, those covering northern regions are more focused on the exercise of lordship than the agency of subjects. They comment in only circumspect terms about those communities’ political ideas and practices. In contrast, works on southern France, particularly Monique Bourin’s Villages médiévaux du bas Languedoc, have considerably more to say about rural communities and their actions.9 Drawing on this tradition, Vincent Challet has brought this knowledge to bear specifically on the recent upsurge of historiography on ‘popular politics’ in the later Middle Ages.10
Yet, as Challet himself notes, southern communities cannot stand in for northern ones.11 Even a century after the Albigensian Crusade brought the Occitan lands into the French kingdom, the differences between northern and southern France remained substantial in terms of political ideas and behaviour, not only because of cultural, linguistic and geographic differences, but also and because of legal and institutional ones which gave southern communities a coherence and a capacity for action that were absent from the greater Île-de-France, especially in the decades that preceded the Jacquerie. The legal and sociopolitical culture of the South was considerably more urbanised than the North, particularly in those regions that have been most studied. It was based on Roman Civil Law, law which was imagined for a political context in which cities predominated culturally and politically.12 In the customary law that ran in the North, the mostly rural phenomena of lordship and its corollary – subjection – loomed much larger. These legal differences were related to the relatively long-lasting independence of southern communities, including rural ones, from lordship, and to major institutional differences between northern and southern communities.13 Southern villages had consulats (councils) or syndics généraux (general representatives) which were closely modelled on urban communal institutions.14 These communities, urban and rural, spoke of themselves and were spoken of as universitates, which were legal persons – effectively corporations – possessing the capacity to act on their own behalf.15 These communities thus possessed a significant degree of agency and legal options which their populations did not have as individuals. As Challet observed, ‘Their position as universitates gave communities a juridical existence and the potential to bypass the level of lordship, going direct to royal government’.16
The North had fewer and weaker such institutions. Less than half of rural communities possessed any discernable legal rights or customs enshrined in charters, and most such privileges were very limited, creating little or no institutional infrastructure through which the community might act in opposition to its lord.17 Nor should we overemphasise the importance of those relatively few settlement that were communes (i.e., self-governing entities with charters of incorporation).18 First of all, many communes had quite ephemeral existences; the commune of Maisnières, for example, was abortive, as was that of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis, seat of the eponymous county and one of the cradles of the Jacquerie.19 Moreover, the wave of communal foundations that crested in the reign of Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223) had long since receded by the mid-fourteenth century. Louis IX (r. 1226–70) had curbed their independence and reformed their governance.20 By 1300, many communes were in deep financial and administrative difficulty, and during the first third of the fourteenth century, many of them were disestablished, trading their liberties to the king in exchange for forgiveness of their debts.21
Sources
Investigating the political ideas and actions of northern rural communities in the decades that preceded the Jacquerie thus means turning directly to the sources. In this domain, as well, northern France has important differences with England and Languedoc. French lords do not seem to have produced anything like English manorial rolls, nor do we have much in the way of the communal records like those that survive for even some small Languedocian villages. On the other hand, we do have collections northern French customary laws, such as Philippe de Beaumnoir’s Coutumes du Beauvaisis. Although they are prescriptive texts, these customals were often based upon real cases and practical experience. At the time of writing the Coutumes in 1283, Beaumanoir had served as a seigneurial officer for the Count of Clermont, often dealing with communities without communes, and he later became a royal bailli (a provincial officer responsible for judicial and fiscal administration).22 The prescriptive texts also help to illuminate the masses of mostly unpublished and often uncatalogued practical documents, which mainly survive in relation to the secular affairs of ecclesiastical foundations, such as land transactions, rent rolls and dispute records. Here, it is possible sometimes to see rural communities and individuals in action, identifying and pursuing their self-interests in complex relationships with one another and the outside world.
This chapter is concerned with two such documents relating to a dispute over customary dues that took place in the second quarter of the fourteenth century between the villagers of Saint-Leu d’Esserent and their lords, the monks of the Cluniac priory of Saint-Leu d’Esserent.23 To be clear, this dispute was not connected to or in any direct way the forerunner of the Jacquerie; the monks (and indeed nearly all clerics) were unharmed by the Jacquerie, which was directed at the secular nobility for a range of reasons, few of which were closely connected to lordship.24 What the documents produced by this dispute do is elucidate the contours of this community and how it defined itself. They reveal its ability to identify and assert its self-interest in the decades before the revolt. They thus provide a starting point for how we might think about rural politics and village protagonism in the absence of communal institutions.
The dispute
The dispute arose in 1326 over the villagers’ responsibility – so the monks claimed – to provide or pay for the meat eaten when the prior of Cluny visited. When the villagers refused, some of their own meat and poultry was seized, and the villagers were outraged. As this took place just after or perhaps even during the catastrophic European cattle murrain of the 1320s, meat was probably scarce.25 Adding insult to injury, it is likely that this conflict about meat arose during Lent, for on the Monday after Palm Sunday, over 200 villagers went en masse to the administrative seat of the County of Clermont at Creil, about an hour’s walk along the Oise.26 At Creil, they sought out the comital prévôt (an administrative official), and before him, they nominated procurators to pursue their complaint against the monks.
Eighteen months later, in November 1327, the monks and the villagers settled their dispute. They agreed that the first time that the Abbot came to visit, each household would contribute twelve deniers parisis (about a day and a half’s wages) for the cost of his meat, but that they would not have to support any subsequent visit that year nor any visit that occurred in Lent.27 (The villagers probably reasoned that if he came in Lent, he should not be eating meat, and it may have been the suggestion that he was going to eat meat during Lent that caused the initial opposition.) If any household refused to pay, it could be compelled to do so by seizures. Such seizures could not, however, be carried out on a household that had paid (ceux qui auront paie pour leurs feux, on ne les pourra contraindre pour les autres). That is, responsibility was to be individual, not corporate. Nor could any amend be levied beyond the amount owed on those households that refused.28
All seems to have been settled for a while, but then a jurisdictional issue arose. Saint-Leu d’Esserent lay in the County of Clermont, which had been held by the Bourbons since the reign of Louis IX, who granted it as an appanage to his youngest son.29 In late 1327, the County briefly passed into royal hands, returning to the Bourbons in June 1329.30 In the autumn of 1329, the monks challenged the seigneurial prerogatives of the Count of Clermont over the priory’s lands and people. They argued that the priory and its possessions were under the royal safeguard (this is a special grant of royal protection), and thus immune from comital interference, and they had the Count cited before the king’s supreme court, the Parlement de Paris.31 If the Parlement issued a judgement, it does not survive, but most of its records from the late 1320s are gone, so this is not surprising.32 But that some sort of at least temporary ruling (or arrêt) was issued in favour of the monks seems likely, for by the end of November 1329, their accord with the villagers had been seen and approved by the bailli of Senlis, a royal official.
Some years passed, and again something changed. In April 1337, the villagers made a new agreement with the monks. The substance of the agreement was exactly that made in 1327, in language as well as content. A Parisian royal official issued a vidimus (certifying his reading) of the 1327 accord in December 1336, only two days after officers in the bailliage (administrative district) of Senlis received word of the new procuration and accord.33 The main differences between the two documents were that the inhabitants had had to nominate their procurators before the lieutenant of the bailli of Senlis – again a mass assembly was required, which means that the list of names of those consenting is different – and this time the villagers were required to have the consent of both this officer and their lord, the prior, to nominate those procurators. According to Beaumanoir’s Coutume de Beauvaisis, seigneurial permission for procuration was obligatory, so the new accord was probably necessary to take into account the change from comital to royal jurisdiction and to address a procedural irregularity that had been noticed during the monks’ suit.34
The two documents that relate these agreements come from the priory’s archives, now housed at the archives départementales de l’Oise in Beauvais. These long and complex confections of nested documents attest to the jurisdictional and procedural complexity of late medieval France. Over half of the 6,000 words that comprise the documents are devoted to legal procedure and conventions, essentially officers’ statements of receiving and approving documents, and the act of procuration itself, which details the responsibilities and prerogatives of the procurators. About 20% of the text is made up of the names of the villagers who made the procuration, which was itself a procedural requirement. The dispute itself takes up only 5% of the text, and the ensuing agreement another 20%.
Political language & the dispute
These documents are markedly lacking in overt political content. The legalistic terminology of rights and freedoms or the discourse of the common good that is familiar from urban complaints and conflicts is almost entirely absent here. Across the two documents, there are four instances of the phrase franchises, droiz & libertez (privileges, rights, and liberties) or variants thereof, which refer to possession of legal entitlements guaranteed by superior authority.35 However, these words are not attributable to the villagers. One instance in each of the documents is found in the formulaic language used to describe the procurators’ duties. The other two instances, both from the 1336–37 document, relate to the permission of the Prior and royal official allowing the villagers to choose procurators. That is, they reflect their superiors’ conception of the claim, not the language that came from the villagers.
When the villagers’ own specific complaint was described, it was the material facts, not their legal rights, which were signalled. In 1326, the matter was said to be leurs nanps (pledges) qui sont pris (i.e., the possessions seized from them when they refused to provide the Abbot’s meat). In both documents, while the monks allege their saisine & posession (of rights) to constrain the villagers, the villagers themselves are said simply to have asserted le contraire par pluseurs faiz & resons (the opposite, on account many facts and reasons). What these faiz & resons might be are not specified, and the language suggests that these were material facts and logical deductions, not claims to specific legal rights. They apparently possessed no privilege or immunity granted either by a superior authority or by dint of their status as a community or as individuals. The villagers’ claims, at least as recorded in these documents, seem to have rested on their sense of natural justice alone.
Nor is the settlement itself an agreement that reconciles the competing rights of the monks and the village. The accord is said to have been made
considering the love (amour) which the lord ought have toward the subject [and the] obedience and reverence (obeissance & reverence) which the subject ought have toward the lord, [and] desiring to have good peace (bonne pais) and good love (bonne amour), strong and whole, each toward the other.36
This is a reciprocal relationship – both parties have duties toward one another – and it is an affective one, based on amour, but it is also one of hierarchical subjugation, requiring obedience and submission (reverence). Here, one might say we have lordship, but not governance. We have interests and objectives, but not politics, except in the broadest sense of the term.
Politics and political institutions also seem absent in the language used to describe the village and villagers themselves. The term universitas does not appear, nor is the village spoken of as a commune. Many of the communes – that is, self-governing settlements with charters of incorporation – which had existed in the County of Clermont had been suppressed by this point, but at any rate, Saint-Leu d’Esserent had never been among their number. It was what Philippe de Beaumanoir referred to as a ville batiëce, a very unusual term, which he used specifically to distinguish those communities that did not possess a commune from those that did: viles ou il n’a pas commune, que l’en apele viles bateïces (towns/villages where there is no commune, which are called villes bateïces).37 Because it lacked a commune, the village as a whole had had to come to Creil in order to nominate their procurators in 1326. Challet and Forrest have noted that legal action through procuration allowed ‘those members of the masses without any institutional recognition’ an avenue for the pursuit of self-interest,38 but it must be said that this was a much more protracted and complex process than a lawsuit on behalf of an institutionalised corporation. As the Coutumes de Beauvaisis stipulated, in towns that have no commune (villes qui n’a point de commune), procuration must be made by the agreement of the whole ‘common’ (commun), each of whom (chascun du commun) must be asked for their assent and that individual agreement recorded in writing (mis en escrit).39 The long list of villagers at Saint-Leu, whose names – both first and last (nom et surnom) – the royal bailli ordered to be written down, demonstrates the importance of this time-consuming procedure. Towns with a commune had no need for this kind of laborious exercise: ‘For the towns with communes,’ explained Beumanoir, ‘have their mayors and their sworn officers, who are established for such things … according to the privilege (franchise) which is given to them by the stipulations in their charters’.40 Communes also had their own seals, but the villagers of Saint-Leu d’Esserent lacked a seal, the literal sign of corporate identity and authority.41 This was another reason that they had to come before the comital prévôt and the lieutenant of the royal bailli. According to the Coutume de Beauvaisis those without a seal, ‘must make their procuration under the seal of the bailli or that of his ordinary judge’.42
Those making this procuration are most commonly referred to in these documents simply as habitans (inhabitants). This is the third most frequent word across the two documents. (It is tied with the preposition dessus.) The word habitans appears nineteen times in H 2441 (the 1326 document) and thirty times in Hs 664 (the 1336–37 document).43 The antagonists in this suit were thus predominantly identified by the accident of domicile in a specific place, without a corporate identity or membership distinct from that fact of residence. This is not just a semantic or stylistic preference. Residence is the key to the legal settlement itself, where liability for the twelve deniers charge is said to lie with those who ‘now reside or will reside in future’ in the village.44
This is particularly notable be because residence was not a stable fact. There was considerable rural mobility in the fourteenth century, as the sources for this dispute illustrate.45 Comparing the names listed from the 1326 assembly with those of the 1336 assembly, out of 389 forname + surname combinations, only fifty-seven occur in both lists.46 These numbers should be treated with some caution: They may understate the number of reappearances because people did not always use the same surname.47 Equally, names that appear in both lists may not refer to the same individual; it is not possible to know whether, for example, a Jean Deu[x]den[t]s who appeared in 1336 is the same Jean Deu[x]den[t]s as he who appeared 1326. Another indication of mobility is that 23 of the 227 people listed in the 1326 document, and 31 of the 219 in the 1336 list bore surnames that indicate a personal or family origin outside of the village, such as de Tille, le Normant, de Beaumont, l’Englois, etc. There are also some ‘foreign’ forenames that indicate extramural origins, like Fremin, a name found mostly near Amiens; Geoffroy (who unsurprisingly bears the surname le Normant); and Almary, a name more often found in the South.
This demographic fluidity is another reason that the communauté defined by residence could not have the abilities of an incorporated commune. According to Beaumanoir, members of a commune who wished to move outside the town were to be assessed an exit tax, taking into account their relative contribution to the commune’s finances, but the liabilities of those living in villes batiëces ceased when they moved and became liable to the exactions of the community in which they took up residence.48 Residence in a ville bateïce like Saint-Leu d’Esserent thus appears accidental and ephemeral, a poor basis for political action. Nevertheless, although there was no commune of Saint-Leu d’Esserent, there was a communauté, a community.49 The term communauté is the 15th most common word in the corpus, occurring eleven times in H 2441 and fourteen times in Hs 664. Its textual associations within the corpus reveal an interesting web of associations. The term is used synonymously with habitans, and both communauté and habitans are specified as being of or from the ville. The word ville occurs in most frequent proximity to the words habitans, Saint Leu, communauté, demourans and residens. In both documents, the procuration is where the term communauté occurs with greatest frequency.50 It was through choosing representatives that the community created itself as an entity to be represented.
There is thus locatable an incipient or protocorporation among the villagers of St-Leu that was called into being by their shared interest and cooperative action in bringing the suit and making the procuration. Beaumanoir spoke of this shared but noninstitutionalised cooperation as a ‘company’ (compagnie), a very general term he used for all kinds of joint ventures, including merchant companies but also marriage, in which li bien de l’un et de l’autre sont commun (the welfare of one and the other are the same, or shared, common).51 In the case of towns or villages without a commune, he said a ‘a company is made by reason of community’ (une compagnie … se fet par reson de communauté)… in order to undertake and pay for endeavours that cannot be accomplished by individuals alone and which are par l’acort du commun (agreed to by everyone). Beaumanoir went on to say that the communal activities constituent of a compaignie in a ‘community of a settlement without a commune’ (communauté de ville sans commune) include maintaining the church, the wells and the roads, but also lawsuits: pleas to maintain their right and to safeguard their customs (ples pour leur droit maintenir et pour leur coustumes garder).52 Legal action could create a compagnie not just for procedural reasons, but – and here there are important parallels with southern France and perhaps with medieval peasant communities in general – as consequence of the villagers’ sociability, their common objectives and actions, realised through mass participation.53 The eventual settlement, of course, reaffirmed their ‘obedience and reverence’ toward their lords, but at least in the first instance, the villagers were able to use this sociability to access the judicial infrastructure that allowed them challenge seigneurial claims even in the absence of durable or pre-existing communal institutions.54
Power within the community
Sociability does not, however, mean absence of conflict or universal inclusion.55 To the contrary. It is clear, even from these formulaic documents, that there was social and economic stratification in Saint-Leu d’Esserent. The men named as communal representatives most likely represented a socially and economically exclusive group. The surname borne by Jean and Adam Richaise, who served as procurators in 1326 and 1336–37, respectively, literally means wealth and comfort. Tellingly, the Richaise are the only family to have had more than one representative nominated. Adam Richaise, procurator in 1336–37, probably took his brother or his father Jean’s place, for the 1336 mass includes an Isabel, ‘wife of the late Jean Richaise’. Surnames of the other representatives also point in this direction, for not a single representative bore a professional surname (le Bouchier, le Coustrurier, etc.) or a patronymic (Hubert, le Bernard, etc.) though such names made up a total of 18% of the surnames in the lists.56 Nor did any of the representatives bear one of the many names related to Saint-Leu’s important stone and building trades, such as de la Vene (vein), Goves (caves), Estaille (cut stone), Perron (stone slab) or Torchie (daub).
The names of the representatives perhaps tell us about another division in the community: In 1326, the villagers initially nominated nine ‘procurators, attorneys, and special messengers’, out of which they were made to name three to take the case forward. (Likely this reflects procedural norms; it did not happen in 1336–37 because at that point the suit followed royal procedure not seigneurial procedure or local custom). Of these nine representatives, between four and six bore surnames that perhaps refer to quarters of the town: du Marais (from the swamp), des Rues (from the streets), du Four (from the oven), des Courtieux (from the kitchen gardens), possibly de la Croix (from the Cross) and d’Ardillières. This last, which is the name of a street in Saint-Leu d’Esserent today, might mean from the village of Ardillières in Western France near La Rochelle, or it may mean ‘from the hanging place’ (i.e., the gallows).57 Given that the rue de Hardillières leads out of town and that gallows would normally have been sited at a settlement’s edge, the latter seems a more likely possibility. So, it may be that we can see the outlines of internal, topographic subdivisions of the village – neighbourhoods or quarters – that were sufficiently distinct to require individual representation. None of those men, however, was among the three procurators who took the case forward in 1326.
The formulae for procuration stress unanimity and ‘common accord’, but these great masses of people who came to nominate procurators did not include the entire community of Saint-Leu. In the first document, the communauté’s constituency is defined in the first instance as communauté des bonne genz de la ville de Saint Leu, while in the second it is the communauté de la ville, where, too, it occurs in immediate proximity to bonne gent. Bonnes gens can simply mean local people – in English one might say ‘folk’ – but the term does beg the question, were there people who were not ‘good’ or at least not ‘good enough’, who are invisible to us because they were not included as part of the communauté?
Both documents also specify that the masses were only the ‘larger and better part (la plusgrant partie et la plus saine)’ of the community. This was both a quantitative and a qualitative distinction. The 200+ individuals who assembled each time were probably heads of households, and it would be surprising if this did not represent well over half the population. The phrase plus saine, which is somewhat unusual, can mean ‘the near entirety’, but it might also mean ‘the better part’.58 The criteria for inclusion among these – the plus saine – was primarily, if not exclusively economic. This was certainly so in 1336, when the 216 people whose names were listed were explicitly said to be the suffisans de la ville. That is, those of the town who possessed ‘sufficient’ means. In his chapter on procuration, Beaumanoir, too, had privileged ‘the more sufficient’ members, for, he said, ‘it is not right (ne convient pas) that it come to pass that the little people or the poorest could block that which the greater and more sufficient part agree’.59 So the poorer, more marginal members of this community may not have taken part in this supposedly communal endeavour.
Nor was this ‘greater and better part’ even present in all of its members. As I mentioned, while it goes unstated in the documents, it is reasonable to assume that those who attended these assemblies were heads of households, and the medieval household was patriarchal. Gender, and perhaps to an even greater extent, age and lifecycle determined who got to participate in this communal act. Of the 418 people listed, only forty-four or slightly over 10% were female, a figure markedly lower than the average of 25% female names found in English manorial records.60 (In fact, in the 1326 list, only 6% (15/227) of the names are female, compared with 14% (30/219) in that of 1336. This may be because in 1326 the villagers travelled to Creil to make the procuration, whereas in 1336, the bailli’s officer came to them.) Seven of these women, or 17%, are identified as widows (fame de feu N.), and two of them are listed as the wives of living men, who seemingly could not attend the assembly and are not otherwise listed.61 We know anything more about only one of them, who apparently accompanied her son, Guerart dou Tertre, in 1336 and is listed after him as Ysabel, sa mere.62 Along with Guerart, two other young or youngish men also appear in 1336 document: Andrieu filg (son) [de] Jehan le Dean and Jehannot (little John), filg de Thiebaut d’Ardillière. Presumably Andrieu and Jehannot were filling in for fathers infirm or occupied elsewhere, but other sons still tied to the patriarch’s household by age or lack of money were denied that opportunity, or perhaps, shielded from that responsibility. Those women and young men whom we can locate in these masses were likely from its richest and most prominent members. It is notable that two of them – Ysabel, widow of Jean Richaise, and Jehannot, son of Thiebaut d’Ardillière, were related to men who had served as communal representatives in 1326.
Conclusion: toward the Jacquerie
This ‘village democracy’ was thus predominantly male, mature and relatively well off. For all that, it was still associative, massive and broad, and it was capable of corporate action, even in the absence of corporative institutions. To return to the problem from which this chapter began, this mass sociability must be considered a key factor illuminating the pre-history of the Jacquerie. Participation in the revolt was based on the village – Jacques were identified by their village of origin and inhabitants of particular villages acted together – but the revolt’s organisation does not seem to have emerged from or made extensive use of corporate or communal institutions. This may be because there were not so many corporate or communal structures in existence to be used. It is notable that the Jacques did adopt and adapt royal structures and practices – both political and military – and that some of their leaders were drawn from the milieu of petty officialdom.63 This has notable parallels with the leadership and organisation of the English Rising of 1381,64 but it reflects the specific political situation of fourteenth-century France. Ghislain Brunel has argued that after the suppression of the communes, ‘the king occupied a political and economic space left vacant by the disappearance of the region’s only autonomous institutions’.65
Yet, the search for institutions capable of harnessing popular politics or being harnessed by them is probably misleading. It should not overshadow the casual but capital relationships among individuals who lived in physical proximity to one another and who were accustomed to come together to accomplish their objectives, even if only temporarily and in ad hoc ways: to maintain their churches, wells and roads and to advance their lawsuits, as Beaumanoir said. Such practices were probably the overriding determinant of sociopolitical life for most rural people in the Jacquerie’s heartlands, and far more important than institutional structures in making the revolt possible. As Hugues Neveux has noted, the Jacquerie and later uprisings suggest that that rural political life in northern France ‘had an infinitely greater vigour than a study of local institutions would lead one to believe’.66 Massive assemblies were one of the key organisational features of the revolt – indeed assemblées is one of the terms sometimes used by judicial sources to describe the revolt as a whole – and smaller village assemblies were the method through which many of the revolt’s local leaders were chosen.67 Where information exists about particular Jacques’ backgrounds, their individual ties – especially those of family, profession and propinquity – seem to have been of great importance in shaping their involvement in the revolt.
I will conclude this chapter with a particularly intriguing example of such ties from Saint-Leu d’Esserent: Toward the end of the list of villagers who assented to the 1326 procuration appears a Jean Lespert (or ‘the Expert’) and following him a Pierre le Pignart. A further Pignart, named Adenot, follows a couple of names later. It is not clear how the lists of names were ordered, but there is some clustering of family names and of women, which suggests that these people were standing together in the crowd that had assembled to assent to the procuration. None of these men appears in the 1336–37 document, but twenty-three years later, Jean Lespert and his son-in-law, one Benoît Paignart, received a royal pardon for their participation in the Jacquerie. In this document, they are described as ‘subjects of the monks of Saint-Leu d’Esserent’ and communis en biens, which probably means that they shared a household and/or a business, in addition to their kinship ties.68 This pardon specifies that these men ‘currently lived in Senlis’, a nearby provincial town, so their immigration to Senlis probably explains their absence from the 1336 procuration. We do not know whether their participation in the Jacquerie included events at their original village. Like about half the pardons for Jacquerie, the description of their activities employs a standard boilerplate.69 On the other hand, it is certain that the Lespert family’s tie to the village was durable and extended beyond their subjection to the monks, for at the end of the fourteenth century, a Loren Lespert, resident of Senlis, left a generous legacy to the church of Saint-Leu d’Esserent, a record of which the monks preserved in their cartulary.70
Still, for Jean Lespert and his son-in-law Benoît, the Jacquerie was probably as much connected to their new community as to their original one, for Senlis was a major urban bastion of the revolt. At least nineteen other Jacques, including some of their most important leaders, lived in the city before or after the revolt.71 Senlis was much bigger than Saint-Leu d’Esserent, but having lost its commune in 1320, it was too was a ville batiëce. So when, in 1339, it wished to nominate representatives in the communal interest, its inhabitants (habitans, résidens et demourant) or at least their ‘greater part’ (gregneur partie), had to assemble ‘all together’ to demonstrate their assent (tous ensemble concordans).72 Jean Lespert and the Paignarts were likely there, though unfortunately the bailli did not record the names, but certainly, they knew – because everyone knew – how a community mobilised itself to pursue its objectives, even in the absence of institutions.
Notes
1. Some of the research for this article was undertaken with the support of a British Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship (grant reference AH/K006843/1). My special thanks to the staff of the Archives départementales de l’Oise at Beauvais [hereafter AD Oise], the Archives nationales de France [hereafter AN] and the library of the University of St Andrews.
2. E. Müller (ed.), Cartulaire du prieuré de Saint-Leu d’Esserent (1080-1538), Pontoise: Société historique du Vexin, 1901; A. Blanc and J.-P. Gély, ‘Stone from medieval churches located to the south and east of Paris’ and J.-P. Gély and M. Wyss, ‘Building stones at Saint-Denis from its beginnings to the eighteenth century’, in V. Olson (ed.), Working with Limestone: The Science, Technology and Art of Medieval Limestone Monuments, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, pp. 59–74, 75–103; P. Durvin, ‘Les origines de la Jacquerie à Saint-Leu-d’Esserent en 1358’, Actes du 101e congrès national des Sociétés savantes (Lille - 1976), Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1978, pp. 365–74. The bridge whose existence Durvin assumed never seems to have been built. Ferry: C. Estienne, La guide des chemins de France, Paris: Charles Estienne, 1552, p. 19.
3. S. Luce, Histoire de la Jacquerie d’ápres des documents inédits, new edn, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1894; J. Flammermont, ‘La Jacquerie en Beauvaisis’, Revue historique, 9, 1879, pp. 123–43; J. Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The eponymous Jacquerie: making revolt mean some things’, in eadem with Dirk Schoenaers (eds), The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 55–75 and works cited therein at n. 3.
4. R. Cazelles, ‘La Jacquerie: Fut-elle un mouvement paysan?’, Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres. Comptes rendus, 122, 1978, pp. 654–66; S. K. Cohn, jr., ‘Enigmas of communication: Jacques, Ciompi, and the English’, in H. R. Oliva Herrer, V. Challet, J. Dumolyn, and M. A. Carmona Ruiz (eds), La comunidad medieval como esfera pública, Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014, pp. 227–47, esp. 233–4. See also D. Aiton, ‘“Shame on him who allows them to live”: the Jacquerie of 1358’, Ph.D. thesis, Glasgow University, 2007, emphasizing modern theories of local organisation.
5. M. Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics, trans. J. Sondheimer, London: Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1966, esp. pp. 167–96 [Les caractères originaux de l’histoire rurale française, new edn, 2 vols, Paris: Colin, 1952–56]. See also H. Sée, Les classes rurales et le régime domanial en France au Moyen Âge, Paris: Giard & Briere, 1901, esp. pp. 602–11. Because this chapter will primarily be read by Anglophones, French works have been cited in English translation where available. R. Fossier, Peasant Life in the Medieval West, trans. J. Vale, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988 [Paysans d’Occident: XIe-XIVe siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984]; L. Genicot, Rural Communities in the Medieval West, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1990; P. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999; M. Bourin and R. Durand, Vivre au village au Moyen Âge: Les solidarités paysannes du XIe au XIIIe siècles, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2000, with a useful bibliographic orientation to further works at pp. 7–12; P. Freedman and M. Bourin (eds), Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion, Turnhout: Brepols, 2005.
6. Among others: R. Faith, ‘The “Great Rumour” of 1377 and peasant ideology’, in R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston (eds), The English Rising of 1381, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 43–70; C. Dyer, ‘The rising of 1381 in Suffolk: its origins and participants’ and ‘The social and economic background to the rural revolt of 1381’, in C. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England, London and New York: Hambledon, 2000, pp. 191–220, 221–49; M. Müller, ‘Conflict and revolt: the bishop of Ely and his peasants at the manor of Brandon in Suffolk, c. 1300–81’, Rural History, 23, 2012, pp. 1–19; C. Fletcher, ‘Rumour, clamour, murmur and rebellion: public opinion and its uses before and after the Peasants’ Revolt (1381)’, in Oliva Herrer et al. (eds), La comunidad, pp. 193–210.
7. B. J. P. van Bavel, ‘Rural revolts and structural change in the Low Countries, thirteenth–early fourteenth centuries’, in R. Goddard, J. Langdon, and M. Müller (eds), Survival and Discord in Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of Christopher Dyer, Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, pp. 249–68; J. Dumolyn and J. Haemers, ‘Patterns of urban rebellion in medieval Flanders’, Journal of Medieval History, 31, 2005, pp. 369–93.
8. G. Fourquin, Les campagnes de la région parisienne à la fin du Moyen Âge (du milieu du XIIIe siècle au début du XVIe siècle), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964; R. Fossier, La terre et les hommes en Picardie jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle, Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1968; B. Bedos[-Rezak], La châtellenie de Montmorency des origines à 1368, Pontoise: Société historique et archéologique de Pontoise, du Val d’Oise et du Vexin, 1980, esp. pp. 218–40. On such works, see T. N. Bisson, ‘La terre et les hommes: A programme fulfilled?’, French History,14, 2000, pp. 322–45.
9. M. Bourin, Villages médiévaux en bas-Languedoc: Genèse d’une socialibilité, 2 vols, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987; J. Drendel, ‘The institutions of village government in later medieval Provence and the origins of the Council of Trets’, Historical Reflections/RéflexionsHistoriques, 19, 1993, pp. 249–66; L. Verdon, La voix des dominés: Communautés et seigneurie en Provence au bas Moyen Âge, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012; S. Mukai, ‘Sérignan et Vendres, deux villages biterrois face à la guerre dans la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle: Étude du gouvernement villageois au bas Moyen Âge’, Ph.D. thesis, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 2017.
10. V. Challet, ‘“Mundare et auferre malas erbas”: La révolte des Tuchins en Languedoc (1381–1384)’, Ph.D. thesis, 4 vols, Université de Paris – I, 2002; J. Dumolyn, J. Haemers. H. R. Oliva Herrer and V. Challet (eds), The Voices of the People in Late Medieval Europe: Communication and Popular Politics, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014; Oliva Herrer et al. (eds), La comunidad; V. Challet and I. Forrest, ‘The masses’, in C. Fletcher, J-P. Genet, and J. Watts (eds), Government and Political Life in England and France, c. 1300-c. 1500, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 279–316.
11. Challet and Forrest, ‘The masses’, pp. 283–4; See also R. Fossier, ‘Les “communes rurales” au Moyen Âge’, Journal des savants, 1992, pp. 235–76, esp. 261.
12. Southern France did have some local customals, but these were of much more limited scope and impact. See P. Ourliac, Études d’histoire du droit médiéval, Paris: Picard, 1979, pp. 3–15.
13. E. Magnou-Nortier, La société laïque et l’église dans la province ecclesiastique de Narbonne (zone cispyrénéenne) de la fin du viie à la fin du xie siècle, Toulouse: Publications de l’Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1974.
14. Bourin, Villages médiévaux, 2: esp. 150–3.
15. L. Otis-Cour, ‘Universitas: the emergence of the juristic personality of towns in the south of France at the turn of the twelfth to the thirteenth century’, in G. Krieger (ed.), Verwandtschaft, Freundschaft, Bruderschaft: Soziale Lebens- und Kommunikationsformen im Mittelalter, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2009, pp. 253–70.
16. Challet and Forrest, ‘The masses’, p. 288.
17. Bourin and Durand, Vivre au village, pp. 110–6; Fossier, ‘Les “communes rurales”’, pp. 259–60. See, for example, the limited prerogatives, under strict seigneurial supervision, granted to the échevins of Fontaines-sur-Somme in the 1280s in R. Fossier (ed.), Chartes de coutumes en Picardie, XIe—XIIIe siècle, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1974, no. 194, pp. 545–52. A much more expansive list of rights was claimed by the village of Pontpoint, though these were strongly contested (AD Oise H 643, where the document detailing the village’s rights has been used to bind a much later property deed).
18. The estimate of Charles Petit-Dutaillis, that there were fewer than 40 in northern France at the height of the communal movement in the early thirteenth century, is too low (C. Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises: Caractères et évolution des origines au XVIIIe siècle, A. Michel (ed.), Paris, 1970 [1947], 139 [The French Communes in the Middle Ages, trans. J. Vickers, Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland, 1978]). I count at least 30 communal charters granted to Picard settlements in Fossier (ed.), Chartes de coutumes.
19. R. Fossier, ‘Maisnières, vie et mort d’une “commune”: Communautés rurales et seigneuries écclesiastiques en Picardie au début du XIIIe siècle’, Histoire et sociétés rurales, 41, 2014, pp. 7–15; idem (ed.), Chartes de coutumes, no. 99, 113; L. Carolus-Barré, ‘Les institutions municipales de Clermont en Beauvaisis de 1197 au XVe siècle’, in Comptes-rendus & mémoires de la Société archéologique et historique de Clermont-en-Beauvais, 26, 1948, pp. 6–30.
20. W. C. Jordan, ‘Communal administration in France, 1257-1270: problems discovered and solutions imposed’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 59, 1981, pp. 292–313.
21. Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes françaises, pp. 139–57, and see G. Brunel, ‘Les hommes de corps du chapitre cathédral de Laon (1200–1460): Continuité et crises de la servitude dans une seigneurie ecclésiastique’, in Freedman and Bourin, Forms of Servitude, pp. 131–77, at 171, 175.
22. F. R. P. Akehurst, Introduction to The Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, trans. idem, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, pp. xiii–xxv; R. Jacob, ‘Beaumanoir versus Révigny: the two faces of customary law in Philip the Bold’s France’, trans. F. R. P. Akehurst, S.-G. Heller and M. Reichert, in S.-G. Heller and M. Reichert (eds), Essays on the Poetic and Legal Writings of Philippe de Remy and His Son Philippe de Beaumanoir of Thirteenth-Century France, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2001, pp. 221–76.
23. AD Oise H 2441 and AD Oise Hs 664.
24. On this point, see Firnhaber-Baker, ‘eponymous Jacquerie’, pp. 64–7. Another, apparently unrelated dispute between the villagers and the monks in 1349 is detailed at AN X2a 5, fol. 152r, 153v and 162v–63r.
25. In Ireland, the epizootic did not abate until 1326 and English herds took two decades to recover (B. M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 209–27).
26. Their names, identities and relationships, as well as those of their successors a decade later, are discussed later in this chapter.
27. On wage rates, see S. Farmer, ‘Down, out, and female in thirteenth-century Paris’, American Historical Review, 103, 1998, pp. 345–72, at 353.
28. AD Oise H 2441, repeated verbatim in AD Oise Hs 664.
29. E. de Laurière, D.-F. Secousse, et al. (eds), Les ordonnances des rois de la troisième race…, 21 vols, Paris: Imprimerie royale and others, 1723–1849, vol. 11, p. 342.
30. Louis Carolus-Barré, ‘La réunion du comté de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis à la couronne (25 décembre 1327-1er juin 1329)’, Bulletin philologique et historique jusqu’à 1715 du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, années 1942-1943, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1945, pp. 189–98.
31. AD Oise H 2517.
32. E. Boutaric (ed.), Actes du Parlement de Paris, 2 vols, Paris: H. Plon, 1863–67, 2: 637, n. 1.
33. This man was the guardian of the prévôté of Paris and probably the officer responsible for ensuring the king’s safeguard over the monks.
34. Philippe de Beaumanoir, in A. Salmon (ed.), Coutumes de Beauvaisis, 2 vols, Paris: Picard, 1970 [1899–1900], ch. iv.154, 169, vol. 1, pp. 80–1, 86–7. The Coutumes has been translated into English (above, n. 22). All translations in this chapter are my own. On procuration and procedure, see Guillaume de Breuil, in F. Aubert(ed.), Stilus curie Parlamenti, Paris: Picard, 1909, xiii.12, p. 84; J. Jacquart, ‘Reflexions surs le communauté d’habitans’, Bulletin du centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 3, 1976, pp. 1–26.
35. 1 instance in AD Oise H 2441; 3 in AD Oise Hs 664.
36. AD Oise H 2441: considerans l’amour que seigneur doit avoir au subget [et l’]obeissance & reverence que subget doit avoir au seigneur… desiranz … d’avoir … bonne pais & bonne amour, ferme & entiere, li uns envers l’autre; AD Oise Hs 664: considerans la bonne & vraie obeissance & reverence que subget doit avoir a son seigneur convoitans et desirans pour tant leur pooir de avoir requerre & pourchacier bonne pays et bonne amour ferme et enterigne envers les dis Religieux leur seigneur.
37. Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. xxi.647, vol. 1, pp. 323–4; G. Hubrecht, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, vol. 3: Commentaire historique et juridique, Paris: Picard, 1974, 202–6.
38. Challet and Forrest, ‘The masses’, pp. 289–90.
39. par l’acort de tout le commun (Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. iv.154, vol. 1, p. 80, which further notes that tuit cil qui s’i acordent doivent estre mis en escrit comme acordant. See also ibid., ch. iv.153, 169, 171, vol. 1, pp. 80, 86–7, 87–8.
40. Car les viles de communes ont leur maieurs et leur jurés, liquel sont establi pour la … selonc la franchise qui leur est donnee par les poins de leur chartres (Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. iv.171, vol. 1, p. 88). On communes, their rights and problems, more generally, see ibid, ch. l, vol. 2, pp. 266–75.
41. See Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, ‘Mobile technologies and the mobilisation of urban identity’, The Mediaeval Journal, 8, 2018, pp. 137–77.
42. doit fere sa procuracion seeler dou seel de la baillie ou de son juge ordinaire… (Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. iv.145, p. 78).
43. I have used the online software voyant tools <https://voyant-tools.org> for the semantic analysis of the texts. In AD Oise H 2241, this term is used primarily in the section for the content of the conflict and its resolution. In AD Oise Hs 664, habitans occurs throughout the document, though again with the greatest intensity (18/30 times) in the conflict and resolution section.
44. Les diz habitanz qui demeurent a present & demouront ou temps avenir; les dis habitans qui demeurent a present ou demourront ou temps avenir en la dite ville (AD Oise H 4421).
45. Cf. for England, C. Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain, 850-1520, New Haven, CT and London: Yale, 2002, p. 184.
46. 37 of those are individuals with surnames shared by others in the list, leaving 20 of them with unique surnames, who probably had to attend because they were individuals without the possibility of family representation.
47. P. Beck, ‘Personal naming among the rural populations in northern France at the end of the Middle Ages’, in G. T. Beech, M. Bourin, and P. Chareille (eds), Personal Names Studies of Medieval Europe: Social Identity and Familial Structures, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2002, pp. 143–56; K. Michaëlsson, Études sur les noms de personne français d’après les rôles de taille Parisiens (rôles de 1292, 1296–1300, 1313), 2 vols, Uppsala: Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift, 1927–36, esp. I, pp. 142, 175–6.
48. Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. xxi. 646–7, vol. 1, pp. 322–4.
49. On the vital legal distinction of terminology, see for example the lawsuit against the associated villages of Saint-Thierry in 1365, who had to explain that their use of the terms corpus et communiaum ought not be understood in a technical sense ‘but to differentiate them from the individual inhabitants of the villages’ (sed ad differenciam singulorum habitatorum omnium villarum)(G. Robert, ‘L’abbaye de saint-Thierry et les communautés populaires au moyen-âge’, Travaux de l’Académie de Reims, 142, 1930, pp. 87–174, at pp. 97–8 and no. 12, pp. 140–4, quote at no. 12, p. 143).
50. The language closely resembles that of the example procuration provided in Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. iv.140, vol. 1, pp. 76–7.
51. Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. xxi.622, vol. 1, p. 309. Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 174–5.
52. Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. xxi.647, vol. 1, p. 323: Et ceste compaignie si se fet es fres et es cous qu’il leur convient metre es choses qui leur sont commune et des queles il ne se pueent consirer sans damage, si comme de leur moustiers refere et de leur voies amender, de leur puis et de leur gués maintenir, et des autres choses qui sont fetes par l’acort du commun, si comme des cous qui sont mis en ples pour leur droit maintenir et pour leur coustumes garder. He also envisaged them coming together (ensemble) in order to come up with the money.
53. On sociabilité, see Bourin, Villages médiévaux, as well as Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 176–85; S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300, 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1997, esp. pp. 148–52.
54. An instructive comparison here is with the village of Louvres-en-Parisis, about twenty kilometres south of Saint-Leu, where about fifty years earlier, a confraternity (confratria) had undertaken to maintain the church, roads and wells and to ‘preserve the rights of the village’ (pro juribus dicte ville conservandis), as well as to police work and drinking (A. Teulet, J. de Laborde, E. Berger, and H.F. Delaborde (eds), Layettes du Trésor des chartes, 5 vols, Paris: H. Plon, 1863–1909, 5: no. 876, pp. 308–14, quote at 308, cited in Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 171–2). It is probable that Beaumanoir was familiar with this particular case.
55. Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 189–96. Even among serfs there was substantial social and economic differentiation in the fourteenth century: Brunel, ‘hommes de corps’, p. 156.
56. 53 professional sobriquets (13%); 20 patronymics (5%).
57. Online Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, vid. hardillier, hard, and hart <http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/>.
58. Online Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, vid. sain: definition II.b.2.
59. Beaumanoir, Coutumes, (ed.) Salmon, ch. iv.171, vol. 1, p. 88. and ibid., ch. xxi.648, vol. 1, p. 324.
60. Sherri Olson, A Mute Gospel: The People and Culture of the Medieval English Common Fields, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009, pp. 94–5, also citing other studies. On the percentage of urban female heads of households and their disproportionate excusal from taxation for poverty, see Farmer, ‘Down, out, and female’, p. 354, also citing other studies.
61. Jehanne fame de Nevelon and Richent fame [de] Guiot Rogier.
62. It is notable that he is not listed as her son, nor are there many matronymics among the names from Saint-Leu d’Esserent. An Andrieu Mariainne, listed in 1336, and two ‘Morine’s are the only obvious possibilities. On the frequency of matronymics in England see Olson, Mute Gospel, pp. 101–8.
63. J. Firnhaber-Baker, ‘The social constituency of the Jacquerie revolt of 1358’, Speculum, 95, 2020, pp. 689–715.
64. N. Brooks, ‘The organization and achievements of the peasants of Kent and Essex in 1381’, in H. Mayer-Harting and R. I. Moore (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, London and Ronceverte: Hambledon, 1985; H. Eiden, ‘Joint action against “bad lordship”: the Peasants’ Revolt in Essex and Norfolk’, History, 83, 1998, pp. 5–30.
65. Brunel, ‘hommes de corps’, p. 175.
66. ‘Commentary from a French perspective’, in P. Blickle (ed.), Resistance, Representation, and Community, Oxford: Clarendon, 1997, pp. 44–53, at 51.
67. AN JJ 86, no. 231, fol. 75v–76r; AN JJ 86, no. 465, fol. 164r–65v and AN JJ 86, no. 596, fol. 217 (ed. in Luce, Histoire, no. 40–1); AN JJ 88, no. 89, fol. 56v–57r; AN JJ 90, no. 354, fol. 182 (ed. Luce, Histoire, no. 49); AN JJ 90, no. 476, fol. 238v-39r (ed. in Luce, Histoire, no. 52); AN X1a 19 fol. 348v-50r; R. Delachenal(ed.), Chronique des règnes de Jean II et Charles V: Les grandes chroniques de France, 2 vols, Paris: Librarie Renouard, 1910–20, vol. 1, p. 187; Cohn, ‘Enigmas of communication’; J. Firnhaber-Baker, The Jacquerie of 1358: A French Peasants’ Revolt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, esp. pp. 96–118, 144–68, 219–26.
68. Jehan Lespert de Saint Leu d’Esserans, demourrant a present a Senliz, et Benoit Paignart, son gendre, communis en biens, subgiez des Religieux de Saint Leu d’Esserans par contrainte de peuple aient este avec plusieurs autres du pais d’environ aus effroiz qui derreinement & nagaires ont este faiz par les genz du plat pais contre les nobles du dit Royaume (AN JJ 90, no. 356, fol. 183v).
69. aus effroiz qui derreinement & nagaires ont este faiz par les genz du plat pais contre les nobles du dit Royaume, a abatre en pluseurs lieux fortresses & dissiper leurs biens, coru sus & aucuns mis a mort. However, the phrase couru sus (attacked) is a rare addition to this formula which may indicate that they were at that first incident, which, unlike the vast majority of Jacquerie activities, did involve physically attacking a group of noblemen. See AN JJ 92, no. 227, fol. 55v (ed. V. de Beauvillé, Histoire de la ville de Montdidier, 2nd edn, 3 vols, Paris: Imprimerie de J. Claye, 1875, vol. 1, pp. 516–17).
70. Cartulaire du prieuré, no. 211 and no. 603. Loren Lespert also appears in Senlis’s municipal records in 1384: AD Oise Edt 1 BB 1, p. 16.
71. 10 of these men appear in AN X1a 21, fol. 514 and AN X1a 22, fol. 47r, which specify that the men sued for damage to fortification at Fontaine-Challis were from Senlis. One of those listed also appears in a suit for damage to Robert de Lorris’s castle at Montépilloy in AN X1a 18, fol. 63, along with another five who can be found as inhabitants of the town in other documents (AD Oise Edt 1 BB 1; AD Oise H 599; AD Oise H 841; and AD Oise Edt 1 CC 10, nos. 1–2, where another Jacques, remitted at AN JJ 86, no. 205, fol. 67r, also appears). An agreement regarding damage to Ermenonville, another of de Lorris’s castles, was made with Henry du Change, inhabitant of Senlis and former lieutenant of the bailli (AN X1c 13a, no. 14; AD Oise H 2517); Jean Bernier led the town’s militia as noted in his remission (AN JJ 86, no. 387, fol. 133v–34r, edited in Luce, Histoire de la Jacquerie, no. 37). Some of these men can also be found in AD Oise G 2254 and at P.-C. Timbal (ed.), La guerre de Cent Ans vue à travers les registres du Parlement (1337-1369), Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1961, p. 437.
72. J. Flammermont, Histoire des institutions municipales de Senlis, Paris: F. Vieweg, 1881, no. 37, pp. 216–8.