What was serfdom?

Serfdom was a medieval system of unfree labour in which peasants, known as serfs or villeins, were legally bound to a lord's land and required to work it in exchange for protection and the right to farm a small plot for themselves.

The system was part of feudalism, the hierarchical social and economic order that dominated much of Europe, including England, from roughly the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. In England, feudalism was formalised and extended after the Norman Conquest of 1066. William the Conqueror treated all land as ultimately his own and granted it to his leading followers, the barons, in return for military service. They in turn granted parts of their holdings to knights, and the knights held manors worked by the peasantry. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, recorded this structure in detail and is one of the richest sources for understanding the lives of serfs in early medieval England.

A serf was not a slave. Serfs could not be bought and sold as individuals, and they had customary rights that were recognised in the manor court. But they were not free. They could not leave the manor without their lord's permission, they could not marry without the lord's consent, and in many manors they could not pass property to their children without a payment. In return for their small landholdings, serfs were required to work the lord's demesne land for a set number of days each week, often three, and to provide additional labour at harvest. They also owed dues in kind, such as eggs, chickens, or grain, and money payments for use of the lord's mill, oven, or winepress.

The decline of serfdom in England was driven by several forces. The Black Death of 1348 to 1349, which killed perhaps a third of the population, created an acute shortage of labour and gave surviving peasants stronger bargaining power. Lords who tried to enforce old obligations faced resistance and, in 1381, the Peasants' Revolt, led by Wat Tyler and inspired in part by the preacher John Ball, marched on London. Although the revolt was suppressed, the conditions that caused it continued. Over the fifteenth century, money rents replaced labour services, and by around 1500 serfdom in England had effectively ended. The last formal traces were removed during the Tudor period.

Serfdom persisted much longer in other parts of Europe, particularly Russia, where it was not abolished until 1861.