what are the rights of Nobility (In France in 1630's is the main question)

[LordGhee]

Thanks to Curufea site

 

http://www.curufea.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=RulesVersailles

 

I understand better the right of High nobility (the peers) but what is the rights of the lower nobility and any of the commoners?

 

(Is the right to be armed and defend ones self a basic right of nobility?)

 

Lord Ghee

[Curufea]

Re: what are the rights of Nobility (In France in 1630's is the main question)

 

That I can't answer I'm afraid - it was a two week research a few years ago just for the competition. You'd best look at resource material.

 

If you'd like to try online references first, here's some good links-

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=17th+century+france&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=pdz&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=yB77StjVNc2jkAXqn-G1Cw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CCwQ5wIwCg

http://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/chevalier.htm

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/215768/France

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=QjqsAAAAIAAJ&dq=17th+century+french+nobility&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://www.c17.org.uk/

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: what are the rights of Nobility (In France in 1630's is the main question)

 

This is a pretty hard question to answer succinctly. Between 3 and 5% of the French population was noble, and the vagueness of the numbers reflects difficulty in defining terms.

I'd start by throwing over this quaint notion of early modern Europe as an age of arms control laws. Everyone carried a knife, and even if there were laws that required you to carry your birth certificate (what birth certificate?) when you were walking around with a pike, there were no police to ask to see it.

Formal duelling is another matter. But duelling is a social ritual and a very different matter from all the other various sorts of informal public violence.

 

Second, and most famously, French nobles didn't have to pay taxes. That sounds like the measure of a very unequal society, which early modern societies were, but that might be a bit misleading taken in isolation. It reflects the fact that the monarchy didn't dare call the Estates General to levy taxes, and it varied according to definitions of "tax" and by region of the country. Mainly it meant the gabelle, or salt tax, a big enough deal in its own right, admittedly.

We hear a great deal about office being restricted to the nobility, but there is some question of just how real and formal these restrictions were before the "aristocratic reaction of the eighteenth century." It would seem more accurate on its face to say that rich people had more privileges than poor people, and the more privileges the nobility were assigned by law at a given place and time, the more likely the rich were to buy/discover/assert noble status. I'm not just saying that the rich were better off, or that many nobles were rich, or that some nobles weren't rich, although all three are true. There is a problem here in defining what a noble is.

If you just want to boil it down, have a bunch of guys with swords going in groups for mutual protection, pretending to have more money than they actually do and using Roturier (fake noble) as an insult. Or, to put it another way, flashing bling, hanging with the homies, and accusing each other of not keeping it real. Young men haven't changed that much. (Call this the "eternal gangsta" theory of ahistoricism.)

On a more serious note, this series of three books, of which apparently only volume 2 is available on Amazon, has useful chapters on France in volume 1, I think.

http://www.amazon.ca/European-Nobilities-Northern-Central-Eastern/dp/1403933758/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257976858&sr=1-35

[LordGhee]

Re: what are the rights of Nobility (In France in 1630's is the main question)

 

Lawmower boy

 

Is the "Eternal Gangsta" therory of ahistorcism your theory your theory??

 

Love that.

 

Any help on any noble Privileges would help.

 

Lord Ghee