The cens et rentes were paid each year on St Martin’s Day, early in November.  By that time the harvest had been flailed and safely stowed away; the poultry had fattened among the fields of stubble.  One and all, the habitants came to the manor-house to give the seigneur his annual tribute.  Carrioles and celeches filled his yard.  Women and children were brought along, and the occasion became a neighbourhood holiday.  The manor-house was a lively place throughout the day, the seigneur busily checking off his lists as the habitants, one after another, drove in with their grain, their poultry, and their wallets of copper coins.  The men smoked assiduously; so did the women sometimes.  Not infrequently, as the November air was damp and chill, the seigneur passed his flagon of brandy among the thirsty brotherhood, and few there were who allowed this token of hospitality to pass them by.  With their tongues thus loosened, men and women glibly retailed the neighbourhood gossip and the latest tidings which had filtered through from Quebec or Montreal.  There was an incessant clatter all day long, to which the captive fowls, with their feet bundled together but with throats at full liberty, contributed their noisy share.  As dusk drew near there was a general handshaking, and the carrioles scurried off along the highway.  Every one called his neighbour a friend, and the people of each seigneury were as one great family.

The cens et rentes made up the only payment which the seigneur received each year, but there was another which became due at intervals.  This was the payment known as the lods et ventes, a mutation fine which the seigneur had the right to demand whenever a farm changed hands by sale or by descent, except to direct heirs.  One-twelfth of the value was the seigneur’s share, but it was his custom to rebate one-third of this amount.  Lands changed hands rather infrequently, and in any case the seigneur’s fine was very small.  From this source he received but little revenue and it came irregularly.  Only in the days after the conquest, when land rose in value and transfers became more frequent, could the lods et ventes be counted among real sources of seigneurial income.

Then there were the so-termed banalites.  In France their name was legion; no one but a seigneur could own a grist-mill, wine-press, slaughter-house, or even a dovecot.  The peasant, when he wanted his grain made into flour or his grapes made into wine, was required to use his seigneur’s mill, or press, and to pay the toll demanded.  This toll was often exorbitant and the service poor.  In Canada, however, there was only one droit de banalite—­the grist-mill right.  The Canadian seigneur had the exclusive milling privilege; his habitants were bound by their title-deed to bring their grist to his mill, and his legal toll was one-fourteenth of their grain.  This obligation did not bear heavily on the people of the seigneuries; most of the complaints concerning it came rather from the seigneurs, who claimed that the toll was too small and did not suffice, in the average seigneury, to pay the wages of the miller.  Many seigneurs declined to build mills until the royal authorities stepped in with a decree commanding that those who did not do so should lose their banal right for all time.  Then they bestirred themselves.