Medieval serf
As a serf you would be born tied to a piece of land and to the lord who owned it. You could not simply pack up and leave – but neither could he throw you off.
Bound to the manor
Serfdom took many forms across medieval Europe, but the core was the same: an unfree peasant held a plot of land from a lord and in return owed him labour, produce and fees. In England this meant ‘week-work’ on the lord’s demesne – often two or three days a week, more at harvest – plus payments when you married (merchet) or died (heriot, often your best beast). Leaving the manor without permission was forbidden, and disputes went to the lord’s own court.
In Poland the picture shifted over time. Many medieval villages were founded under German law with fairly light rents, but from the 15th and 16th centuries the nobility pushed labour obligations upward. The Statute of Toruń of 1520 set a minimum of one day of unpaid work per week, and in practice demands later grew far beyond that.
A year in the open fields
Most of your life would follow the farming calendar. Villages typically worked large open fields divided into strips, rotated between winter grain, spring grain and fallow. You ploughed with oxen shared among neighbours, sowed by hand, weeded, reaped with a sickle and threshed through the winter. Bread, pottage of peas and beans, cabbage, ale or small beer, and occasional pork or eggs made up the diet. A bad harvest meant real hunger.
Ways out
Escape was possible. Running to a chartered town and living there undiscovered could bring freedom, and in England the Black Death of 1348–1350 made labour so scarce that serfs could bargain for better terms. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 failed, yet English villeinage faded within two centuries. In the Polish lands serfdom lasted much longer: it was abolished in the Prussian partition in 1807, in Galicia in 1848 and in the Russian-ruled Kingdom of Poland only in 1864.
