{
  "schema": "https://archive.neruda-archives.org/files/context/public-context-v1.schema.json",
  "identifier": "NRA-L-000020",
  "language": "en",
  "status": "published",
  "title": "Cens arrears and disputed bailiff fees",
  "deck": "The writer's calculation, accusation and the monetary language of a 1777 complaint",
  "reviewed_on": "2026-07-29",
  "version": "1.0",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "A small debt followed by much larger costs",
      "paragraphs": [
        {
          "text": "The letter of 17 March 1777 concerns arrears of cens: a principal sum of 2 livres, 5 sols and 11 deniers said to have fallen due at Michaelmas 1776. The writer objects that three summonses were issued where one would have sufficed.",
          "sources": [
            1
          ]
        },
        {
          "text": "The account gives 3 livres, 11 sols and 3 deniers for one summons. Three such charges total 10 livres, 13 sols and 9 deniers; the requested repayment of two charges is therefore 7 livres, 2 sols and 6 deniers. This arithmetic follows the document's own figures.",
          "sources": [
            1,
            3
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "The accusation of concussion",
      "paragraphs": [
        {
          "text": "The writer calls the conduct concussion. In the 1762 dictionary of the Académie française, the term denoted an unlawful exaction by a public officer beyond what was due. Its use makes the complaint serious, but it remains the writer's accusation rather than a judicial finding.",
          "sources": [
            1,
            2
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "Currency and scale",
      "paragraphs": [
        {
          "text": "Under the accounting system used in the letter, one livre comprised 20 sols and one sol 12 deniers. The writer also reports that a bailiff from Mouliherne received 15 livres a day and issued about thirty summonses; those additional claims are preserved as testimony and have not been independently verified.",
          "sources": [
            1,
            3
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "evidence_limits": [
    {
      "text": "The writer's identity remains uncertain, and no related court or estate account has been located. The alleged excess fees, daily rate and number of summonses are not treated as proven facts about the officials involved.",
      "sources": [
        1
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "source-1",
      "kind": "Primary source · manuscript",
      "citation": "Neruda Archives, NRA-L-000020, digital images and reviewed transcript of the letter dated 17 March 1777.",
      "url": "https://archive.neruda-archives.org/NRA-L-000020",
      "link_text": "View the archive record",
      "support": "Supports the debt, fees, arithmetic, reported daily rate and accusation."
    },
    {
      "id": "source-2",
      "kind": "Historical dictionary",
      "citation": "Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 4th edition (1762), entry 'concussion'.",
      "url": "https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A4C1889",
      "link_text": "Read the dictionary entry",
      "support": "Supports the contemporary meaning of concussion as an unlawful exaction."
    },
    {
      "id": "source-3",
      "kind": "Historical reference work",
      "citation": "Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, entry 'Sol'.",
      "url": "https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Encyclop%C3%A9die/1re_%C3%A9dition/SOL",
      "link_text": "Read the reference entry",
      "support": "Supports the relationship between livres, sols and deniers."
    }
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "NRA-L-000020-claim-01",
      "statement": "The document gives a principal debt of 2 livres, 5 sols and 11 deniers and disputes two of three summons charges.",
      "evidence_type": "stated_in_document",
      "certainty": "documentary",
      "source_ids": [
        "source-1"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "NRA-L-000020-claim-02",
      "statement": "The requested repayment of two charges is arithmetically consistent with the figures in the letter.",
      "evidence_type": "scholarly_inference",
      "certainty": "confirmed",
      "source_ids": [
        "source-1",
        "source-3"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "NRA-L-000020-claim-03",
      "statement": "Concussion was a contemporary term for an unlawful exaction by a public officer.",
      "evidence_type": "independently_confirmed",
      "certainty": "confirmed",
      "source_ids": [
        "source-2"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "NRA-L-000020-claim-04",
      "statement": "The alleged excess and the identity of the writer have not been independently resolved.",
      "evidence_type": "unresolved",
      "certainty": "open",
      "source_ids": [
        "source-1"
      ]
    }
  ]
}