Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 379: Jiajing Imperial Clan Reform! Reducing the Power of Civil Officials!

Royal study room.

After receiving the memorials from Prince Zhou and other vassal kings, Zhu Houcong once again issued an imperial decree for a court meeting, ordering the redrafting of the vassal system and officially launching a grand reform of the royal family!
Finally, Zhu Houcong reviewed the regulations drafted by the court, named it "Regulations on the Imperial Clan and Vassal States", and ordered it to be promulgated throughout the country.

Although the new "Regulations on the Imperial Clan and Vassal States" of the Jiajing Dynasty was discussed by court officials, it was always manipulated by Zhu Houcong's imperial will.

Because he had already informed the ministers of the Imperial Study of his direction to reform the royal family, and had determined the basic plan with the ministers of the Imperial Study.

And later he asked the princes to make proposals and the court officials to discuss the matter in court. This was just to find out the loopholes and to fill in the gaps. At the same time, it also showed that he, as the Son of Heaven, was cautious in reforming the policy and open to opinions, thereby enhancing the credibility of the "Regulations on Princes and Vassal States"!

Therefore, the content of the new "Regulations on the Imperial Clan and Vassal States" of the Jiajing Dynasty basically conforms to Zhu Houcong's purpose of reforming the imperial clan.

First of all!

The birth registration procedure became more stringent, and the clan office was still required to annotate the clan records. In the future, those clan members who had titles could directly send their attendants to Beijing to request the clan office for titles.

The Ministry of Rites will then organize local provincial governments to verify the reports. If there are any untrue reports, the governor will verify them.

Chengfeng is a retainer of the royal family with titles. If a Chengfeng does not obey orders, he can be punished by the royal family, even beating to death.

Therefore, Cheng Feng naturally had no right to solicit bribes or force members of the royal family to request titles.

In name, the Fu'an was an imperial envoy sent by the emperor to the local area.

From an institutional perspective, the emperor should trust the governor.

After all, if you, the emperor, don’t trust the imperial envoy you sent yourself, who else can you trust?

of course!

Naturally, the emperor would need to be more cautious in appointing governors.

Generally speaking, as long as the emperor is not too bad or lazy, there will not be any big problems. After all, there are only so many governors in the country, and the emperor can always select reliable people to serve as governors in various places.

Secondly!

The matter of requesting a marriage is the same as reporting a birth. A member of the royal family with a title would directly send an attendant to Beijing to request a title from the Imperial Clan Court. The Ministry of Rites would then issue an order to the local governor to review and report.

If there is any untrue information, it will be checked by the governor.

As for the ban, those whose grandfathers were below the rank of general will no longer be restricted from traveling, and will be allowed to farm, work, and take up official positions.

My grandfather was a member of the royal family who was above the rank of general guarding the country. Every year during the Qingming Festival and Zhongyuan Festival, he was allowed to go out of the city to worship his ancestors to show his filial piety after informing the government. He was also allowed to take the examination of the clan school and serve as an academic official, ritual official, and technical official.

For the royal relatives whose grandfather was a general guarding the country, that is, the parents, brothers and sisters of the princess, the general's wife and the imperial concubine.

As long as their grandfather is different from that of the princess or the general's wife, all males can be officials in the capital, and all female descendants can be officials in the capital.

As for the men with the same grandfather, on the basis of the original exemption of one male from military service, they were all granted official positions according to the corresponding clan rank, and were exempted from the male tax of their uncles, cousins ​​and brothers.

Girls who have the same grandfather as their husbands are exempt from the tax on their husbands.

This was done to encourage the common people to intermarry with members of the royal family.

Of course, the imperial court had to bear some of the losses from the Ding tax.

However, now that the court's income has increased significantly, it is not a big problem to bear these losses.

As for the rice subsidy, it was still allocated by local governments from the reserves in the provincial treasury.

This is because it is allocated directly by the central government, and the transportation costs are enough to pay several times the amount of rice subsidy.

However, these rice subsidies could not be directly controlled by the princes and vassals themselves.

After all, there must be some restrictions. If the princes of each prefecture directly control a large amount of rice salary, it is equivalent to controlling a large amount of money and grain, and their ability to rebel will be stronger.

Therefore, it still has to be allocated by local governments.

However, in addition to the governors supervising whether the local government has allocated the money seriously, the clan affairs office would send a team of imperial consorts and imperial concubines to review the money every three years to check the bureaucracy. In addition, the clan was allowed to send servants to the capital to report the lack of salary, and the officials were required not to stop them, otherwise they would be executed for the crime of alienating the royal family.

Besides!

The system of royal vassalage was also reformed, and the education of royal family members was reformed.

It was clearly required that each kingdom establish a religious school.

The clan school was divided into two classes, male and female. Except for girls who only studied the Four Books for Girls and knitting, boys entered school at the age of seven. They were divided into three main subjects: scriptures, history, and arithmetic, and specialized subjects: geography, medicine, construction, weaving and dyeing, instruments, and music. After studying the main subjects for three years and the specialized subjects for two years, they could choose one main subject and one specialized subject to study, and then study for another three years. Then, based on the examination results, they would be selected to enter the imperial school in the capital.

In the capital, there was a palace school, which was divided into two schools for boys and girls, and students from the royal family and relatives of meritorious officials were selected to attend.

After graduation, royal family members and royal relatives were assigned to serve as academic officials, ceremonial officials, and technical officials.

Both clan schools and palace schools implement compulsory education.

The amount of funds allocated for clan school education is determined each year by the Cabinet's General Department of Finance in conjunction with the Ministry of Clan Affairs and the Ministry of Revenue.

If additional funds were needed, the royal palaces would apply to the Ministry of Clan Affairs, which would then review and report back to the Ministry of Revenue and the local provincial government.

The governor would conduct regular inspections to see if there was any corruption.

The imperial school education was funded by the imperial treasury directly applied to the emperor by the Ministry of Clan Affairs.

The officials of the clan school were selected from the clan relatives and the royal relatives, and the corresponding official establishment was proposed to the court by the chief official of the clan school, and then determined by the Ministry of Personnel.

Officials of the palace schools were also selected from among the royal family, relatives of the emperor, and relatives of the king, but were appointed directly by the emperor.

The reason why Zhu Houcong allowed royal princes to serve as academic officials, ritual officials, and technical officials was actually to use these people's noble status and affluent life to develop science and education.

Anyway, these people are just not suitable to hold military and political power, but they can make use of the generous treatment given to them by the court to engage in academic research and education.

For those royal family members who do not like to study and only like to work hard, they can also work as technical officers and become senior technicians. After all, sometimes even building a good ship or a car can contribute to the improvement of productivity.

In this way, the imperial court did not use the people's money to support them in vain.

This way.

The Zongrenfu also restored the real power of managing the royal family in the early Ming Dynasty.

Civilian power was weakened.

However, the affairs of the royal family were still supervised by civil servants in the Ministry of Rites.

The reason why they are still supervised by civil officials is because civil officials are in charge of the royal family and will demand bribes from them. But that does not mean that the imperial relatives in the Zongrenfu who are in charge of the royal family will not demand bribes!

Therefore, in order to avoid this kind of corruption as much as possible, checks and balances are necessary.

Zhu Houcong never really wanted to abandon all civil servants and isolate them from many important matters. He just wanted to check and balance them, so that they would not be as powerful as before, to the point that not only the harem, external relatives, and military merits were suppressed by them, but even the emperor himself could not control them.

Even this reform of the royal family, which revealed that officials from the Ministry of Rites and local authorities colluded with officials from the royal palace and some royal princes and dukes to extort bribes and force royal family members to report births and marriages, and allowed people who were not members of the royal family to falsely grant titles and receive marriage silver, was investigated by Zhu Houcong who sent his relatives and civil officials to investigate.

Led by the son-in-law of the emperor, Shen Xueli, and the left vice-censor-in-chief, Gui E, a patrol team was formed by selecting capable and upright talents from the children of nobles, the Hanlin Academy, the Imperial College, the Six Departments, and the Censorate to go to the local areas to verify the situation of the royal family.

The Ministry of Rites and many local officials also began to panic because the investigation would reveal that many of them had concealed and falsified information about their royal family members and had engaged in corruption.

"Your Majesty, the governor of Shanxi has an urgent report that Qiu Zhang, the Right Secretary of the Ministry of Revenue, who was ordered to go to Shanxi to investigate the affairs of the imperial clan and vassal states, was caught in a fire at the Taiyuan Post Station in Shanxi and unfortunately died!"

"Your Majesty, the governor of Shandong has an urgent report that the imperial censor Qian Wei, who was ordered to go to Shandong to investigate the affairs of the imperial clan and vassal states, fell into the canal and drowned!"

"Your Majesty, the governor of Henan Province has an urgent report that Xu Yi, the Imperial Academy editor who was ordered to go to Henan, was killed by bandits in Tongwaxiang on his way to Kaifeng!"

Against the backdrop of this major reform of the royal family, Zhu Houcong soon learned from Yang Yiqing that many officials who went to investigate had been killed on the road.

This made his heart burn with anger and he felt like gnashing his teeth.

(End of this chapter)