Wills, Inheritance and the Moral Order in the 17Th-Century Agenais

Abstract

Local custom regulating successoral practice is inadequate when confronted with the testaments themselves. With a sample of 313 wills from the confessionally mixed community of Layrac-en-Brulhois, France, (1606-1707) the authors distinguish the different patterns of succession and link them to the social attitudes of which they are the instrument, underlining the basic coherence and unity of local practice across time and across confessional and social boundaries. The flexibility allowed individual testators was used to protect the elderly foremost, to enhance individuals' welfare over estate consolidation, and to mete out justice in a world of dearth and insecurity.The contours of family structure, the logic of property transmission and an identity with, and concern for, the preservation of the moral order were likely to be placed on the same plane by most people in the seventeenth cen-

La reproduction familiale en terroirs neufs, comparaisons sur des données québécoises et françaises

“…(1992) a même retracé quelques cas de partages strictement égalitaires au xvm e siècle, tout comme il est arrivé dans le pays agenais au siècle précédent (G. Hanlon, E. Carruthers, 1990). Sur un plan plus fondamental encore, celui des objectifs de la transmission familiale, des associations inattendues ont là aussi été rapportées : dans le Lot par exemple, où les parents essaient de préserver à la fois l'intégrité de la maison et la cohésion de la famille (D. Gervais 1992).…”