Page 116 - Changing Living Spaces

Josef Grulich

time, a man was supposed to be able to support a family. At the moment
of his marriage he was expected already to have a stable income based on
tenure of a rural landholding, a craft workshop, or a commercial enter-
prise. This was possible provided that the man owned some property in a
particular area. Under these circumstances, it was logical that a migrat-
ing woman would follow her new husband to the locality where the cou-
ple would then settle.
The low number of widowed persons applying for release letters can
also be explained by property relations. In this case as well, the place of
residence was more often changed by widows (37 cases, comprising 3.4
percent of the total) than by widowers (11 cases, comprising 1.0 percent
of the total).
Situations in which several persons applied for release from serfdom in
a single release letter were quite rare. Among the applicants were child-
less couples (12 cases, comprising 1.1 percent of the total) and married
couples with between one and six children (30 cases, comprising 2.8 per-
cent of the total). It was very exceptional to find applications for change
of feudal allegiance by a single person accompanied by a child, a widowed
person, or an unmarried mother (25 cases, comprising 2.3 percent of the
total). Sibling groups were also not very common among migrants.
Distance of Migration

The distance between the place of origin and the target destination could
be established in about three-quarters of all cases (821, comprising 76.5
percent of the total). Some serfs applied to change their feudal allegiance
but then actually remained in the same locality; there were 67 such cas-
es, comprising 6.2 percent of the total. This situation transpired because
14 villages of the estate of České Budějovice were divided into multiple
sections, which were held by different overlords. This meant that serfs in
that locality were shared among two to six overlords. The most intensive-
ly divided village was Kamenný Újezd. Serfs from this village were shared
among the town of České Budějovice, the estate of Český Krumlov, two
monasteries (Český Krumlov and Vyšší Brod), an archdeaconry (Český
Krumlov), and a priest via the fabrica ecclesiae. In localities in which serfs
were shared among several manorial authorities, a serf had to apply for a
release letter even if he or she was only moving from one house to anoth-
er within the same village.
Although villagers would sometimes move to places far away, in most
cases they migrated short distances (Hayhoe 2016, 25–9, 59–63). When

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