Repopulating the New Gift?

[rotting sea cow]

13 minutes ago, AlaskanSandman said:

And who did Benjen and Eddard plan of filling the Gift with??? Southern Lords? What people were they going to sprout from the ground in the North? The wildlings?

The Gift is for the Watch. This is land beyond the New Gift. This is quite the thing for Eddard and ranger Benjen to be dreaming about 

I think this part deserves its own thread. Yes, it is implied that Ned wanted the New Gift back and repopulate it. Since Ned had King Robert's favour, it could have worked.  How, it is up for speculation.

[AlaskanSandman]

10 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

I think this part deserves its own thread. Yes, it is implied that Ned wanted the New Gift back and repopulate it. Since Ned had King Robert's favour, it could have worked.  How, it is up for speculation.

I Think it's the original Gift, not the New Gift. Though they could just be speaking broadly about both gifts?

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

For what it’s worth, we don’t know how detailed, or how far advanced any such plans were. It may have just been something Ned and Benjen mulled over and filed in the “maybe revisit this idea later” column.

Certainly, in principle, it’s a good idea, considering the obvious terminal decline of the Night’s Watch. A “reimagining” of how the North could be defended and the Wall maintained.

[Unacosamedarisa]

Ned literally calls it "a dream for Spring". Here's the relevant passage...

Quote

His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. "It is a dream for spring, though," Lord Eddard had said. "Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on."

ASoS - Jon V

I think the idea is that, new Lords, occupying the holdfasts and the rest of the Gift, along with their subjects, would be invested in protecting the Gift from Wildling raids. More people there in general makes it harder for Raiders to move about unseen. The Lords would have a Household guard or similar, or would organise levies, and could patrol the Gift, or ride out to confront Raiders. In addition, if these new Lords pay their taxes to the Watch, the Watch is in a better state financially. And, you might also get more volunteers and recruits for the Watch from the families moving to the gift... 3rd son of a farmer decides to sign up to keep his mother and sisters safe from Wildlings, or similar, for example. 

Lords would be easy to find... you'd be offering someone with no (or very little) prospects of inheritance a Title and lands to pass on to their sons in perpetuity. 

Tenants would probably also be easy to find... You'd be offering land and prospects to people with neither. 

[AlaskanSandman]

7 minutes ago, Unacosamedarisa said:

Ned literally calls it "a dream for Spring". Here's the relevant passage...

I think the idea is that, new Lords, occupying the holdfasts and the rest of the Gift, along with their subjects, would be invested in protecting the Gift from Wildling raids. More people there in general makes it harder for Raiders to move about unseen. The Lords would have a Household guard or similar, or would organise levies, and could patrol the Gift, or ride out to confront Raiders. In addition, if these new Lords pay their taxes to the Watch, the Watch is in a better state financially. And, you might also get more volunteers and recruits for the Watch from the families moving to the gift... 3rd son of a farmer decides to sign up to keep his mother and sisters safe from Wildlings, or similar, for example. 

Lords would be easy to find... you'd be offering someone with no (or very little) prospects of inheritance a Title and lands to pass on to their sons in perpetuity. 

Tenants would probably also be easy to find... You'd be offering land and prospects to people with neither. 

Nice find. 

[Legitimate_Bastard]

 

 

Quote

"What happened to them?"

"They died or went away." Brandon's Gift had been farmed for thousands of years, but as the Watch dwindled there were fewer hands to plow the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards, so the wild had reclaimed many a field and hall. In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers. But those were largely gone as well.

"They were fools to leave such a castle," said Ygritte.

 

A Storm of Swords - Jon V

Does this imply that the brothers themselves did all the farming etc. If that is the case I find it surprising. I would have thought they had a separate labor force. 

[argonak]

15 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

 

 

Does this imply that the brothers themselves did all the farming etc. If that is the case I find it surprising. I would have thought they had a separate labor force. 

I think it implies that the original gift was meant as maintenance for the night watch.  Most likely the nights watch used to operate more like an anglo saxon burg, where they spend most of their time doing normal work, but also bear the responsibility for maintaining the defenses and being ready to fight the invaders when the time comes.  In most theories, the Night's watch was only meant to fight wights, and they only seem to come as winter aproaches.

Whereas with the new gift, they became more like a monastery, supported by taxes on others while focusing on their personal mission (defending the wall).  And that was given by the Targeryens who considered the Night's Watch to be border guards against barbarian invasion.

 

[Dorian Martell's son]

4 hours ago, Unacosamedarisa said:

Ned literally calls it "a dream for Spring". Here's the relevant passage...

I think the idea is that, new Lords, occupying the holdfasts and the rest of the Gift, along with their subjects, would be invested in protecting the Gift from Wildling raids. More people there in general makes it harder for Raiders to move about unseen. The Lords would have a Household guard or similar, or would organise levies, and could patrol the Gift, or ride out to confront Raiders. In addition, if these new Lords pay their taxes to the Watch, the Watch is in a better state financially. And, you might also get more volunteers and recruits for the Watch from the families moving to the gift... 3rd son of a farmer decides to sign up to keep his mother and sisters safe from Wildlings, or similar, for example. 

Lords would be easy to find... you'd be offering someone with no (or very little) prospects of inheritance a Title and lands to pass on to their sons in perpetuity. 

Tenants would probably also be easy to find... You'd be offering land and prospects to people with neither. 

Bingo!

 

[AlaskanSandman]

Makes me wonder who has been stocking up the Night's Watch food supplies? Sam finds the store rooms plum full of food, which turns out to be great since they have to feed all the wildlings coming through. Its almost like some one began to initiate some end of this plan.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

7 hours ago, AlaskanSandman said:

Makes me wonder who has been stocking up the Night's Watch food supplies? Sam finds the store rooms plum full of food, which turns out to be great since they have to feed all the wildlings coming through. Its almost like some one began to initiate some end of this plan.

The stewards farm food for the NW. And they trade via Eastwatch.

It would be simple common practice for the NW to stockpile food ahead of winter.

[cpg2016]

On 10/11/2018 at 10:43 AM, argonak said:

I think it implies that the original gift was meant as maintenance for the night watch.  Most likely the nights watch used to operate more like an anglo saxon burg, where they spend most of their time doing normal work, but also bear the responsibility for maintaining the defenses and being ready to fight the invaders when the time comes.  In most theories, the Night's watch was only meant to fight wights, and they only seem to come as winter aproaches.

Whereas with the new gift, they became more like a monastery, supported by taxes on others while focusing on their personal mission (defending the wall).  And that was given by the Targeryens who considered the Night's Watch to be border guards against barbarian invasion.

 

No, this isn't how it worked.  The Gift and New Gift work exactly the same; they're the same feudal tenancy structure as the rest of Westeros.  The difference is that they pay their taxes in kind to the Watch.  In return, the Watch protects them from bandits, wildlings, etc.  We're told what the structure of the NW has always been; Rangers, Builders, and Stewards.  None of these folks work the land.

The decline of the Watch is not a symptom of the depopulation of the New Gift/Gift, but rather the reverse.  As the manpower of the Watch has declined, wildlings are more easily able to evade patrols and raid the peasants south of the Wall.  As there are no lords on the collective Gift, and the NW is too weak to effectively suppress raiders, there is no rapid response force to protect the peasants.  So they move south.

There isn't a good solution to this except to restore the NW to the prestige it had pre-Conquest.   You cannot settle lords and new peasantry on the Gift, because it alienates the lands from the Watch and provides a competing power structure if you don't.  You can't settle more peasants up there, because once they realize how exposed they are to raiders, they'll move away again (though maybe this changes post-apocalypse).

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

1 minute ago, cpg2016 said:

None of these folks work the land.

Stewards work the land. I forget where, but I think in GOT, it's stated that they hunt, raise crops, etc.

[cpg2016]

4 hours ago, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

Stewards work the land. I forget where, but I think in GOT, it's stated that they hunt, raise crops, etc.

It is possible that a small number of them do that on an irregular basis (I think the passage you're referring to is in Jon IV AGOT), but it isn't physically possible to support the NW with just the stewards, or even close to support the Watch with the Stewards.  I think the rule of thumb is that ~85% of the population in medieval Europe was actively involved in working the land.  So I take back the absolute nature of my previous answer, but the overarching point remains; the problem with the decline of productivity in the Gift is that the peasants are leaving and the Stewards are supposed to function more as tax collectors, seneschals, and the like, and not be the agricultural base of the Watch's strength.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

Just now, cpg2016 said:

It is possible that a small number of them do that on an irregular basis (I think the passage you're referring to is in Jon IV AGOT), but it isn't physically possible to support the NW with just the stewards, or even close to support the Watch with the Stewards.  I think the rule of thumb is that ~85% of the population in medieval Europe was actively involved in working the land.  So I take back the absolute nature of my previous answer, but the overarching point remains; the problem with the decline of productivity in the Gift is that the peasants are leaving and the Stewards are supposed to function more as tax collectors, seneschals, and the like, and not be the agricultural base of the Watch's strength.

I don't know. The text is vague. But given the depleted nature of the Nights Watch, I could imagine that they could be sustained by relatively small scale farming around the three remaining forts by the stewards, along with donations from the northern houses, and what remaining tenants there are in the Gift.