When I first started my research into Guillaume Renaud there was one document that was often mentioned but never explored. While the marriage entry in Drouin was everywhere, there was never any discussion of the marriage contract between Guillaume and Marie though the reference to the notarial record of Gilles Rageot was known and mentioned. I assumed it was lost otherwise better researchers than I would have bothered to cover it. As a result, I never looked for it.

As luck would have it, in researching Isaac Bedard I came across the records for many of the notaries of New France including Rageot that were not indexed. While his handwriting is all over the board with some entries being impeccably neat while others are an absolute mess, I was fairly confident I could find a specific date such as the one for the signed marriage contract for Guillaume and Marie. I scrolled through the images quickly jumping ahead by hundreds at a time before finally coming across what I was looking for at image 500. There it was, the names clearly decipherable, but little else.

One might wonder why such a document would even exist. Why would there need to be a marriage contract between what were essentially two peasants whose lives must have been so unpromising that they put their life on the line to make the daunting journey holed up in the hull of a ship for several months eating hard biscuits, salt pork and stale water? The answer has little to do with the specific people named in the agreement and more to do with French customary law and view of the family. According to D.J. Sturdy, "marriage was a contract whereby two families were allied, their respective interests needing to be defined and protected. It was a function of the marriage contract to supply that definition and protection." In this particular instance, it was less about what each of them brought to the marriage, and more about what would be created through the marriage. As the work of France Parent and Geneviève Postolec indicates, the marriage contracts reflect the values of two principles that govern the Coutume de Paris, "the protection of family interests" and "equality between heirs."

Legal documents usually follow a specific format or structure which can be useful in trying to decipher problematic handwriting. French Canadian marriage contracts are no exception. Sturdy breaks the documents into "five main sections: (i) a statement as to the contracting parties, their rang et qualité; (ii) a list of witnesses, with rang et qualité; (iii) preliminary clauses; (iv) the settlement of the bride-to-be and (v) the settlement of the groom-to-be."

True to form, the document introduces Guillaume as a resident of Quebec and the son of Guillaume Regnault and Suzanne De La Haye who were from the parish of St. Jouin in the diocese of Rouen.  Marie is introduced as also residing in Quebec and the daughter of David de la Marre and of the late Anne Beussevestre of the parish of St. Maclou in the city of Rouen.  What is particularly interesting is the indication that Marie's mother was deceased. The death of her parents has not been previously verified with documentary evidence. So, it is clear that her mother died prior to her departure to Canada in 1668 and maybe one of the events contributing to Marie being one of the filles du roi. The lack of a similar annotation for her father would seem to indicate that he was not known to have been deceased. Similarly, Guillaume's parents are not indicated as deceased and so it is either possible that they had died and he did not know or that they were still alive as of the time of the wedding contract. Neither of their deaths have been confirmed though in my coverage of Suzanne De La Haye I refer to a record of an inhumation of the "widow of Guillaume Regnault" in the parish records of St. Jouin dated December 21, 1675.

The next section covers the witnesses to the contract. According to Peter Moogk, "A marriage contract was signed and approved by relatives, friends, and other witnesses in a public ceremony that was more than a token formality." The signing of the wedding contract was a celebratory occasion. The selection of witnesses was not random and there seemed to be a desire to have as prestigious an individual as possible. As Sturdy notes,

 "Relations, friends and acquaintances were invited to act as witnesses, their names being written into the contract and their signatures being appended at the end. In this regard, friends and associates from the highest possible social echelons were called upon, a certain amount of 'one upmanship' being indulged by the two families, for the rang et qualité of the witnesses, as well as their names, were specified in the contract."

There are eight witnesses named though it does not specify if they appeared on behalf of the bride or the groom. Guillaume had the unfair advantage of being in Canada for a number of years, Marie had been there for only about three months when the contract was signed. The witnesses were (Louis) Théandre Chartier Esquire, Lord of Lotbiniere, counselor of the king and his general lieutenant counselor for civil and criminal matters in Quebec. Chartier's wife, Lady Elizabeth D'amour was also present along with their esteemed offspring, René Louis Chartier Esquire, Lord of Lotbiniere, and Mademoiselle Marie Françoise Chartier. The social class of the witnesses drops off after that as the list includes René Branche who is described as an "inhabitant of Charlebourg." Branche was followed by his wife Marie Varin and then Marie Lereau who was the wife of Gervais Bisson who is described as an inhabitant of "La coste St. Michel." There appears to be one other name that is hard to decipher but it may be Jean Semen.

After the witnesses, the contract moves to what Sturdy classifies as "preliminary phrases." These consists of some legalese that indicate that Guillaume and Marie will be married legitimately before the witnesses and the holy mother Roman Catholic Church as early as possible and that from the day of their marriage all movable property will be held according to the custom of communauté des biens.

There are several interesting facets to these phrases. The reference to legitimate spouses (legitime espoux), likely refers that the marriage will be conducted in public and properly as opposed to a clandestine marriage. Legitimate marriages were those that had the approval of the two families. Parents had a lot of authority as to whom their children could marry. The basic unit of French society was not the individual but the family with the father at the top of the hierarchy. As C.-J. de Ferrière noted in 1714

 “God made them subject [to marital authority] by a powerful reason, man and woman being together by marriage, by a union which can only be broken by the death of one of them, it would be necessary that one should be submitted to the other for the government and the administration of common affairs.” 

Legitimate marriages were carefully controlled affairs that followed specific protocols including public announcements. Marriage was not just a result of two people falling in love but signal events that "drew in participants other than the couple, they took time, they involved planning and the exchange of property, and they eventually led to socially recognized cohabitation."  Clandestine marriages undermined this public process. They also had to be accepted when discovered despite the lack of parental consent. Beatrice Gottlieb discusses the quandary presented by the fact that clandestine marriages were not denied as valid marriages. This was a point of contention during the rise of the Protestant Reformation where both reformers and "loyal Catholics expressed their dismay at the fact that the Church of Rome could consider marriages valid that were not entered into properly."

In Canada where many had arrived alone without their family, the presence of respected members of the community as witnesses could serve as a substitute for the role of the parents. In Guillaume's case, this role would have fallen to his employer Chartier for whom Guillaume served as “domestique". According to Peter Moogk, "Officers and employers often came to sign a former dependent's marriage accord. This was a paternalistic gesture expected of social superiors; it was a mark of good will. It also signified consent to the union, which a serving soldier or employee would need to have from his officer or master."

Another curious phrase in the preliminary clauses is the statement that the marriage should occur "as early as possible." According to Perter Gagné, in "5 out of 6 cases in the 17th Century Quebec, marriages happened a month after the contract. For Filles du Roi marriages the average was 17 days. Sturdy indicates it was a matter of weeks between the contract and the ceremony. Guillaume and Marie were not married until 3 months after the contract was signed. We are left to wonder why there was such a delay in their case.

Following the preliminary clauses is the portion of the document that addresses the "settlement of the bride-to-be." This is where the document becomes difficult to read but it appears that Marie had a choice between the customary dowry (la doüaire Coutumiere) or the sum of two hundred livres Tournois. This was an important choice if Marie had ever become a widow. According to Peter Moogk, the customary “dower allowed a widow to enjoy one half of her late husband's estate for life.” If Guillaume’s estate was not impressive, Marie could elect to take the value of 200 livres in money or goods. This way she could absolve herself from any connections with any indebtedness.  As Moogk explains, this “option freed the bereaved wife from the financial obligations that would deprive her of a means of support, and it also relieved her of the administrative responsibilities attached to the enjoyment of her husband's real estate.” Guillaume and Marie’s contract was typical in this respect as most “agreements made in la Nouvelle France provided a prefixed dower of so many hundreds of livres…The amount chosen reflected the groom's social position.”   

Following the bride’s dower should be the settlement for the groom but that is notably absent. This is also where the document becomes very challenging to transcribe and translate. The document is littered with 17th Century legalese and random abbreviations and inconsistent spelling based seemingly on the whims of the notary.  However, there are some clues as to what these clauses may contain. At the bottom of the first page appears the word "hipotheques", the plural of the noun "hypothèque" meaning "mortgage." According to Suzanne Boivin Sommerville, "Sometimes the contract states that the future husband will hypothéquer, establish a type of mortgage, for his current possessions to satisfy this future indebtedness."

There are also some additional phrases relating to the rights to property and goods during the marriage as well as if one of the spouses should die. But there are just too many indecipherable words to understand what is being specified. It would be interesting to determine if these phrases agree with or depart from the traditional concept of communauté des biens. As Boivin Sommerville asserts, "Unless otherwise stated, all couples owned property after marriage under a communauté de biens."  This suggests that on some occasions some other arrangement was made.  

In the end none of these special arrangements in the contract needed to be activated. Both Guillaume and Marie lived fairly long lives and died within weeks of one another. It might be expected that an inventory of the estate would be performed after their death. I have not found one but there was a time when I did not think the marriage contract could be found. Perhaps someday the inventory will be found and it will reveal the extent of the estate.

Please see the Resources page for a link to the image of the document as well as all of the source material used for this post.