text: Cultural differences between the magnates and lesser noblemen grew. The magnates adopted the lifestyle of the imperial aristocracy, moving between their summer palaces in Vienna and their newly built splendid residences in Hungary. Prince Miklós Esterházy (d. 1790) employed the celebrated composer Joseph Haydn. Count János Fekete (d. 1803), a fierce protector of noble privileges, bombarded the French philosopher Voltaire with letters and dilettante poems. Count Miklós Pálffy (d. 1773) proposed to tax the nobles to finance a standing army. Most noblemen were unwilling to renounce their privileges. Lesser noblemen also insisted on their traditional way of life and lived in simple houses, made of timber or packed clay.
  Maria Theresa did not hold Diets after 1764. She regulated the relationship of landowners and their serfs in a royal decree in 1767. Her son and successor, Joseph II (), mocked as the "king in hat", was never crowned, because he wanted to avoid the coronation oath. He introduced reforms which clearly contradicted local customs. He replaced the counties with districts and appointed royal officials to administer them. He also abolished serfdom, securing all peasants the right to free movement after the revolt of Romanian serfs in Transylvania. He ordered the first census in Hungary in 1784. According to its records, the nobility made up about 4.5 percent of the male population in the Lands of the Hungarian Crown (with 155,519 noblemen in Hungary proper, and 42,098 noblemen in Transylvania, Croatia and Slavonia). The nobles' proportion was significantly higher (six–sixteen percent) in the northeastern and eastern counties, and less (three percent) in Croatia and Slavonia. Poor noblemen, who were mocked as "nobles of the seven plum trees" or "sandal-wearing nobles", made up almost 90 percent of the nobility. Previous investigations of nobility show that more than half of the noble families received their rank after 1550.