Abstract Based on seigneurial legislation from the French-speaking principality of Hainaut in the southern Low Countries, this article discerns long-term shifts in the position of different types of officials involved in the local government of lordships. During the twelfth- to early fourteenth-century period of demographic and economic growth, and again as a result of the shortage of labour in relation to land after the Black Death, seigneurial subjects managed to obtain different forms of self-organization. Overall, a bifurcation can be observed between village officials who were and remained servants of the lord and those controlled increasingly by the community. At the same time, a development towards village elites dominating local government is likely to have limited the agency of a major part of the rural population. This study also reveals remarkable parallels between villages and towns concerning the organization and ideological justification of local government.
Margreet Brandsma (Sat,) studied this question.