Chapter 3: Romain Becquet, seigneur in spite of himself (1640-1682)

Romain Becquet was born around 1637-1640 at Bec-de-Mortagne (Normandy); he was the son of the surgeon Julien Becquet and of Anne Vasse.

He arrived in New France in 1661, certainly with a good education and great ambitions; by 1665 we find him bearing the title of notary, which he embellished with the qualifier “royal” — it looks more impressive on a résumé! He was very active in the young colony and never shied away from work.

He married Romaine Boudet in 1666, and the following year she gave birth to a little Jean-Baptiste who did not live 24 hours. She joined him in 1673.

He was a workaholic; as canny as any Norman, he had woven close ties with powerful figures and with religious communities, and had got himself appointed to important posts — as we would say today, he knew how to position himself. He held in turn the offices of notary, court clerk, census taker, bailiff, judge and prosecutor.

He kept the first « livre terrier » of the Île d’Orléans — a terrier, that is, a survey of the lands and their owners, a cadastre (land register). He drew up a great many marriage contracts, wills, inventories, sales, concessions and leases; he took cases to court, sound ones and otherwise, often going so far as to pay fines or serve time in prison when he voiced his disagreement with the final judgment too insolently; and he took part in criminal trials. His work repays study, for he drafted a large number of the marriage contracts of Quebec’s founding families and registered a host of concessions granted by the seigneurs to the first settlers — precious sources of information for historians and genealogists.

He was known for his plain speaking, never hesitating to criticise, to insult, to sue over trifles: irascible, litigious and truculent. Quarrelsome as he was, he was convicted several times for insulting the Conseil Souverain (Sovereign Council) and its members; he called the bailiff Pierre Biron a rogue and a scoundrel; he had to pay fines and serve three terms in prison.

He married Marie-Jeanne Pellerin in 1677, who gave him two daughters, Marie-Louise (1678) and Catherine-Angélique (1680); she died in 1681. He found himself a widower for the second time and responsible for two little girls.

In recognition of good and loyal service, he received two fiefs, in 1672 and 1679: l’île Madame, near the Île d’Orléans, and the seigneury of St-Pierre, between Deschaillons and Gentilly. It was long believed that the seigneury of St-Pierre had been granted in 1672, but it is now established that it was in 1679.

He never set foot there, for hostile Iroquois raids and the presence of mosquitoes and other pests were rather off-putting; the prospects of short-term gain were slim, and moreover the seigneur was under an obligation to settle the territory and bring it into production. I suspect he had no taste for country life, preferring the paved streets of the town of Quebec to the grassy paths of his seigneury; since he never fulfilled that obligation, the two fiefs were taken back from him in 1683, after his death, for want of attention (n’aurait fait aucun bâtiment ni défrichement… n’ayant point été habitée en aucune manière que ce soit…) [would have put up no building nor cleared any land… not having been inhabited in any manner whatsoever…]

He died on 20 April 1682 and was buried in the paupers’ cemetery of the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec, because Monseigneur de Laval had refused him the privilege of burial in the chapel of the Récollets as he had wished. Prudent and shrewd, he had sold his notarial records to the notary François Génaple a few days before his death. He left two daughters who were still minors…

Louise Mousseau, his mother-in-law and the grandmother of his under-age daughters, would be keeping a close eye on things!