These ecclesiastical
seigneuries, moreover, were among the best in point of
intelligent cultivation. With funds and knowledge at its
disposal, the Church was better able than the ordinary
lay seigneur to provide banal mills and means of
communication. These seigneuries were therefore kept in
the front rank of agricultural progress, and the example
which they set before the eyes of the people must have
been of great value.
The seigneurial system was also strengthened by the fact
that the boundaries of seigneuries and parishes were
usually the same. The chief reason for this is that the
parish system was not created until most of the seigneuries
had been settled. There were parishes, so-termed, in the
colony from the very first; but not until 1722 was the
entire colony set off into parish divisions. Forty-one
parishes were created in the Quebec district; thirteen
in the district of Three Rivers; and twenty-eight in the
region round Montreal. These eighty-two parishes were
roughly coterminous with the existing seigneuries, but
not always so. Some few seigneuries had six or eight
parishes within their bounds. In other cases, two or
three seigneuries were merged into a single great parish.
In the main, however, the two units of civil and spiritual
power were alike.
From this identification of the parish and seigneury came
some interesting results. The seigneurial church became
the parish church; where no church had been provided the
manor-house was commonly used as a place of worship.
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