[17][18] The Diepholz Lords then owned the Hollburg Castle between Holßel [nds] and Midlum on the brink of the Wesermünde Geest ridge,[19] allowing a good view over the lower Land of Wursten, then a corporation of free Frisian peasants under only loose overlordship of the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen.

[31] In the valley cuts of the geest between Holßel and Nordholz the convent impounded little becks in order to lay out stewponds for the fish as fasting dishes at lent.

[31] The convent's demesne expansion meant the exclusive usage of geest forests, mires and heaths, previously also commonly used by the free Frisian peasants from the mostly treeless Land of Wursten in order to gain turf, firewood, timber and the fertilising plaggen.

[27] The Wursten Frisians remembered the ordeal of the free Stedingen peasants in 1234, who refused to accept feudal overlordship too, but whom Gebhard had excommunicated and against whom he induced and fought a papally confirmed crusade, all after few Stedingers had slain an itinerant monk.

[17] On the occasion of the move more noble families, such as the Lappes [de] on Sahlenburg and Ritzebüttel [nds], the Knights of Bederkesa, or the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg (as of 1307), added enfeoffments to the convent.

[17][41] Gilbert considered the convent his outpost to wield influence in the free peasant areas of the Lands of Hadeln and of Wursten as well as among separatist noble vassals such as the Lappes.

[46] In 1331 the commoner Gerhard de Merne (= Marren, Süder- and Nordermarren near Midlum) usurped the tithe from Esigstedt, protested by the convent, the enfranchised beneficiary, and left it again to the nuns only after the pastors of the Wursten parishes had intervened.

[17] In the law system of the Bremen prince-archbishopric a free dam (Freier Damm) formed an immunity district (Freiheit) usually inhabited by mere cotters directly under the say of the local feudal lord, here the convent, exempt from sovereign archiepiscopal jurisdiction.

Militarily and politically the Neuenwalde Bailiwick formed a prince-archiepiscopal bridgehead amidst the autonomous peasant corporations (Hadeln, Wursten) and the upstream outposts of the cities of Hamburg and Bremen (Ritzebüttel, Bederkesa).

[17] The farmers in the so-called heath villages held the land they tilled in feudal tenancy (Meierverhältnis [de]), subject to soccage and serjeanty for the convent,[44] whereas the seigniorial jurisdiction was with the Senate of Hamburg, acquired from the Lappes by pawn in 1372.

[56] The convent wielded the feudal overlordship as well as the seigniorial jurisdiction over the villages of Neuenwalde proper, Krempel, the outlying farm Neumühlen, the Vorwerk Kransburg, Wanhöden,[57] and the Altenwalde windmill.

[48] In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the convent may have provided loans for the peasantry in return for regular payments, but records of definite possessions are lacking from this period.

[3] This relatively stable era ended after on 26 December 1499 the Wursten Frisians had defeated the Great or Black Guard in Weddewarden [de], hired by Hadeln's Regent Magnus, the heir apparent of Saxe-Lauenburg to subject them.

On 8 September 1518 ducal forces arriving by ship and Wursten fighters attacking from the land side razed the brandnew prince-archiepiscopal Morgenstern Castle [nds] in Weddewarden.

[3] Between 1522 and 1526 the capable Nikolaus Zierenberg, prior of St. Paul's Friary near Bremen, travelled around, collected data on the convent's privileges and tried to assert them against renitent feudal tenant farmers in Altenwalde, Sievern [de] and Wanna.

[85] In 1557 — under pressure by Joachim Moller, Hamburg's bailiff in Ritzebüttel — Prioress von der Hude could not help it to confirm the Lutheran Hinrich Voß as preacher of Ss.

[84] When in 1569 von der Hude tried to present Father Dyrdyck as the Catholic successor of the first Lutheran preacher at St. James in Holßel, she succumbed to the opposition of the Bremian Drost in the Bederkesa Bailiwick.

[97] The recess further provided that Hamburg's bailiff in Ritzebüttel, then Joachim Beckendorff, ended billetting beadles in the heath villages and prompted the restitution of the abducted liturgical devices to the Ss.

[99] After Administrator regnant John Frederick had found the convent in disorder as to the discipline (unchastity) and the management, in 1606 he decreed a new monastic order, prescribing to learn according to Luther's Catechism.

on the diet in Basdahl the estates of the prince-archbishopric rejected that, but allowed Administrator John Frederick to collect the revenues of the monasteries until the Thirty Years' War would end.

[111] By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 the prince-archiepiscopal elective monarchy was secularised as the heritable Duchy of Bremen, which was jointly ruled with the new Principality of Verden, as Bremen-Verden, since both imperial fiefs were bestowed on the Swedish crown.

[112] On 20 June 1648 Queen Christina of Sweden invested the veteran and former Paymaster General Melchior Degingk (Degens) 1616–1683; later ennobled von Schlangenfel[d]t[113]) with the convent as a fief heritable in the male line (Mannlehen [de]).

Unlike the earlier emancipation of the serfs in Prussia (1810, with redemption procedures starting in 1811) the Hanoverian laws provided only for payments, in instalments, but not generally for cessions of land the tenants tilled, in order to compensate their former feudal lords.

[2] General Superintendent Johann Hinrich Pratje [de] reports that Neuenwalde comprised the convent building, the church, the bailiff's office (Amtshaus), the parsonage, the sextry, the watermill and 53 more hearthes (i.e. households) for the second half of the eighteenth century.

[165] In the subsequent years the convent purchased privileges in the villages of Honstede (Hustedt), Da(h)lem, Krempel, and rights to tithes in Wenekenbutle (Wenckenbüttel).

[173] Every St. Martin's Day, e.g., they each were to pay Rtlr:Sh 142:16:²/₃ estate service money (Hofdienstgeld; i.e. the monetarised duty to work on the convent's premises) and to deliver 8 tonnes and 3 Himten[174] of rye (all numbers for 1778).

Therefore also the convent's share in contributing to the expenses of a coronation of a new Holy Roman Emperor and the necessary first travel to Rome [de] was rather low, it was less than 0.0014% (or ⁠30/22016⁠) of the total sum to be levied in the prince-archbishopric.

[112] Several of the formerly feudally dependent villages, such as Da(h)lem (last mentioned as a settled place in 1367), Holte (near Altenwalde), and Honstede (Hustedt), were abandoned until the fourteenth century, with some (Esigstedt and Wenckebüttel) even of presently unknown former location.

With effect of 1 January 1811 all the South Elbian German coast and its hinterland was annexed to France and the Canton of Dorum became part of the new Bremerlehe Arrondissement [de] within the Bouches-du-Weser Department.

[148] In 1813 after the French defeat the Neuenwalde Bailiwick was restored, and Bremen-Verden was reestablished too, however, all its grown local peculiarities in administration were levelled when this Hanoverian province became the High-Bailiwick of Stade in 1823.