The proprietors struggled in vain to bring about a closer union.
But for both proprietors and Jesuits a surprise was in store.
The reformers of the previous reign had endeavoured to make the emancipated peasantry administratively and economically independent of the landed proprietors; the conservatives of this later era, proceeding on the assumption that the peasants did not know how to make a proper use of the liberty prematurely conferred upon them, endeavoured to re-establish the influence of the landed proprietors by appointing from amongst them " land-chiefs," who were to exercise over the peasants of their district a certain amount of patriarchal jurisdiction.
But these constitutions, several times revised, actually served only as a theoretical standard for the proprietors and were abrogated altogether in 1693, and the colonists were governed by instructions which granted them much greater privileges.
The class of coloni appears to have been composed partly of tenants by contract who had incurred large arrears of rent and were detained on the estates as debtors (obaerati), partly of foreign captives or immigrants who were settled in this condition on the land, and partly of small proprietors and other poor men who voluntarily adopted the status as an improvement in their position.
