333] THE PLEBISCITE IN ANCIENT AND FEUDAL TIMES 35 



During a first period the vassal, wishing to remit his fief to an- 

 other, had to remit it into the hands of his seigneur with the request 

 that the seigneur invest with it the person to whom the vassal 

 wished to present it. In fact the fief was inalienable and this was 

 a natural consequence of its original character : the seigneur had 

 conceded the property by reason of certain personal services which 

 the vassal should render him and any mutation would have modified 

 the situation. . . . Such was the ordinary mode of the transmission 

 of fiefs during the Qth and loth centuries. This process has fallen 

 into desuetude, but it was never abrogated and one need not be 

 astonished to meet it sometimes in the texts of a later epoch. Dur- 

 ing a second period the formalism was suppressed and the vassal 

 himself directly transmitted his fief, but with the consent of his 

 seigneur. This second period seemed to open with the nth century. 

 The seigneur limits himself to give his consent to the alienation, but 

 he is careful to secure payment for his consent. Thence dates the 

 right of sale which already appears in the patents of the nth cen- 

 tury. A great number of texts speak of the necessity of the consent 

 of the seigneur in almost all parts of France.22 



Glasson does not mention the question of the consent by 

 the people of the fief thus transferred by the vassal, the 

 villagers, bourgeois, and the serfs and others. Luchaire 

 refers to one case in the I2th century where, in 1127, in the 

 election of a successor to Count Charles le Bon of Flanders, 

 "one sees participate not only the 'hauts barons flam- 

 mands,' but even the bourgeois of the large cities, Gand and 

 Bruges. . . ."" However, the bourgeois were not the 

 people. " The totality of those enjoying the benefit of the 

 franchise constitute the body of the bourgeois. . . . The 

 conditions required to be a bourgeois of a free city are 

 nearly the same from one end of the territory to the other. 

 . . . The population of a free city does not always coincide 

 exactly with the body of the bourgeoisie. There remain 

 ordinarily outside (a) the agents of the seigneur . . . , (b) 

 the noblesse and the local clergy . . . , (c) the strangers, 

 properly called . . . and certain inferior categories, {d) 

 the subjects of the seigneurs who have not been conceded 

 the franchise. . . ."" 



Solicrc's repeated statement we would therefore modify 

 to the extent of holding that during the 12th and 13th cen- 



22 E. Glasson, Ilistoire du droit ct dcs institutions de la France, 

 Paris, 1903, vol. iv, pp. 3.26-JV7. 

 ^* l-ucliairc, |). 218, note i. 

 =<* Ibid., pp. 3yt>-3y»- 



