My fourth great grandfather Mathias Havel was a peasant farmer during the second serfdom in Bohemia. This is the third in a series of posts on his obligations to the Krumlov domain, or estate, in southern Bohemia. Mathias' labor, or robot, obligations were discussed in the first post. The second post, discussed his individual obligations which included payment of taxes, rent, and required in-kind contributions to the Krumlov domain. This post will be about the local community obligations that were required to be met by the persons in his village. Like his personal commitment the community obligation was a combination of both payment in cash and in-kind contributions. These posts can provide not only a picture into the life of Mathias Hawel, but generally to other peasant farmers in the mid to late 18th century.
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| Urbarium page Identifying Community Obligations Trebon Archives |
Mathias was a farmer who lived at house number 15 in the rural village of Ratiborova Lhota. At that time, it was known by its German name of Melhutka. The village, or community, had to provide a payment of 36 kreuzer to the domain on two separate dates, with those being the feast days of St George and St Gall. But, the community also had to provide annual dues, known as the purchase-tithe, to the authority's estates rent master. He was like an overseer who was the eyes and ears of the lord with his collection of payments. The purchase tithe in this case was an annual payment of 4 kreuser and 4 phennig in cash, but there also was the in-kind contribution of two hens. I am not sure what a hen was worth, but for some reason the hens, probably for egg laying, is important to the rent master. The farmers probably took turns providing the hens.
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| One Stable Cadastre Map of Ratiborova Lhota area |
The rent master probably made sure that the farmers paid for their use of community pasture land. The urbarium identifies a rent of 6 Rhenish gulden and 51 kreuzer due by the community for its use of 87 strich of pasture land--at least for as long as the authority permitted such activity. I suspect this is land area, and a strich being about .707 acres means that the community pasture land totaled about 61.5 acres. This pasture land is on top of the one-half strich of arable land the community had in its possession from the domain (how nice of them), and the meadow land which equated to a crop of one two horse cart load of hay. The hay provision appears comparatively minor until you see further down in the record that "The community is obliged to provide the following quota of so-called manorial deer hay (fodder for the manor's game deer): 55 bales each weighing 10 heavyweight pfund." Each bale would weigh, based on my calculations, about 12.31 pounds. The word heavy, I believe, means that the average weight has to exceed the minimum of a pfund--The domain probably wanted to make sure the bales weighed more than the base weight. As in other areas, the domain had the obligations in their favor.
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| Village of Ratiborova Lhota Stable Cadastre Map. Havel House is Circled |
The manor also had significant woodland holdings of 96 and 2/3 strich, which equates to about 68.34 acres of woodlot in the village. We know that Mathias may have had to haul not only firewood, but also seasoned timber to Netolice, which means that the woodlot contained timber that was suitable for construction purposes, and not just firewood. Also, with Mathias harvesting morels off his property, there were likely other hardwood forests in the area. There is nothing in the record to indicate if they practiced sustainable forestry, but I suspect they were aware of the forest value, as pine trees were planted and fertilized with manure through robot labor. The practice of some level of sustainable forestry is consistent with the implementation of one-third of the arable land area lying fallow each year.
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| Map of former Havel farm fields and meadow (in red) Indication Sketch of Stable Cadastre |
The local farmers also must have grown flax. According to the Urbarium, "all farmers of the court (that is all farmers in the six communities comprising the Zahori court) are obliged to provide an annual quota of 1 strich (about 24.73 US gallons) of linseed to the dominion against which they receive 28 kreuzer." Not a great deal of payment given the likely number of farmers in that court. Ratiborova Lhota was a smaller community of eleven farmers at the time, so we can guess that there were well over 60 farmers who in turn received the 28 kreuzer. Yet, after harvesting the seed, the farmers were left with the stalks, which could be spun into yarn. While they received payment for the linseed, they received no payment for the obligation to "spin 10 pfund of medium tow-fiber yarn without reward." The community was required to provide the equivalent of 11 plus pounds of spun yarn at no cost. I do not know how much of the plant it takes to make the yarn, but the yarn would yield a linen type of cloth that could be used to make clothing--think linen shirts, although this would not be fine linen. I guess the yarn obligation could have been worse, it could have been heavy weight pfund.
Whether the peasants found the task of spinning the yarn pfund (pun) or not, I am sure it took a great deal of time; time which did not seem to count against the robot manual labor requirements. We don't know how much of the community obligations Mathias was called on to make, but given that he was below average in land managed in Ratiborova Lhota, his requirement to assist in meeting the village contribution was probably below average. Mathias' grandfather was a weaver before taking over the farm from his father. Perhaps his family made some of the clothes out of the linen from the flax they grew. The Sunday clothes had probably been embroidered by the women in the household.
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| Former farm field of the Havel family Indication Sketch of the Stable Cadastre |
Mathias Havel was one of eleven farmers in the rural village of Ratiborova Lhota. Each farmer had their own obligations for free robot labor, cash and in-kind payments to the domain, but most, if not all, would also have to contribute to the varied community and court obligations. In last week's post I noted that Mathias had an income of about 60 Gulden, and I based this on the belief that about 1/3 of his income was subject to tax. This past weekend I finished reading William Wright's book in which he notes that from 1773 to 1774 the tax was 40% of income, placing his income not at 60 Gulden a year, but about 53 Gulden a year (Wright, p. 144). If you think 40% was bad, from 1763 to 1772 the tax was 46.5% (p 144).
Mathias lived in a time of change that was coming for the serfs, and in fact the Emperor Josef received pushback on reforms from many factions, including serfs. Upon his death, with revolt by the seigneurs brewing his brother, who succeeded him, would roll back many of the changes he attempted to implement. Change, however, would come, but would take decades to fully implement given the intransigence faced by the varied factions, mainly the lords of the estates. This is the third post related to Mathis Havel, and a future post will consider one other obligation he had--payment to the church. That may be the next post in line, unless of course Land Girl gives me other material to write about.
Sources:
D'Amelio, Richard of Boheimb Research Services. April 2022, varied correspondence. (Many thanks to Richard for a great deal of information on this subject.)
D'Amelio, Richard of Boheimb Research Services. Transcription to German and then translation to English of the Urbarium records. (His services were engaged by the author.)
Himl, 2003 Die 'armben Leute und de Macht' Portion of this work translated and provided by Richard d' Amelio of Boheimb Research Services (April 2022)
Klein, Alexander and Sheilagh Ogilvie 2016, "Occupational Structure in the Czech lands under the second serfdom." Economic History Review, vol 69.
Velkostatek Český Krumlov, Urbarium, Ordinal 31, 1773 found at: https://digi.ceskearchivy.cz/134537/1/2651/814/78/0 (varied images)
Wright, William E. 1966. Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign: Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth Century Bohemia, University of Minnesota Press.
Maps of Ratiborova Lhota area are from: https://ags.cuzk.cz/archiv/
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