How were the peasants treated?

Answer 1

Peasants were treated badly like slaves (they can be classed as slaves)

-----

Peasants were mostly serfs, who were not entirely free, but many medieval peasants were yeomen or cottars, who were free. There were also some slaves in Europe, but the general tendency reduced the number in time because they were freed.

The serfs, who were the majority of the peasants, pretty much organized themselves. They paid rent, in the form of labor, part of the crop or money. In return for this they were guaranteed a job, a home, and protection from crime, war, and famine. It was a two way deal, in which they had rights and duties, and so did the lord on whose land they lived.

The reason serfs were not entirely free was that they were not legally allowed to leave the land. But even that was a two way thing. The lord was not allowed to evict them either, unless there was good reason, such as not paying rent.

There is a link below to an article describing this.

Answer 2

English peasants were treated a good deal better than many people would have you believe.

Most peasants in medieval England were serfs - some were freemen. Slave trade was made illegal by King William I, the Conqueror, and slavery was abolished by King Henry I.

Serfs were not slaves. They were legally tied to the land where they lived, and they could not legally move away, but they also could not be made to move by their lords. In earlier times they gave their lords service, instead of rent, and the amount of time was usually one or two days per week. They also worked on common fields for some time per week, and they had land allocated to them for their own use. The organization and allocation was done by a reeve, who was also a serf, and in many cases the reeve was elected by the serfs. In later times, the obligation of the serfs often came down to a money payment for rent. The lords were obliged to protect the serfs. Historians disagree over whether the serfs were obliged to serve military duty.

Freemen owned their own land, but they had obligations they owed to the king for this, including military service. The military duty of the freeman was usually to be an archer, which is why a yeoman is one who works hard or an archer. The English archers were a formidable military group, who could destroy charging knights from hundreds of yards away, in good conditions. They were respected and the lords were not interested in alienating them. A freeman could lose his property if he owed money or otherwise got into trouble, and his life was not as secure as the life of a serf.

There were times when a serf who decided to move off the manor where he lived would be declared free, if he was gone for over a year. There were also communities where no one could be arrested for being a runaway serf - this was enacted by kings who wanted certain communities to grow for one reason or another. Clearly most serfs did not run away - at least not before the Black Death. One important reason for this was that in running away, a serf lost the security of having a guarantee of work and a place to live on the manor.

Contrary to one widely held view, serfs did not need permission of the lord to marry, and marriage did not require a church service of any kind. Church marriages were for the rich or titled people, until the renaissance. Prior to that, a couple would exchange vows, possibly without any witness, and announce the fact they had done this. Marriages were often registered in the church registries, but this was not technically a requirement.

Punishments for crimes were not the same for serfs as they were for wealthier or more important people. The idea that English punishments were cruel is mostly because of accounts of people found guilty of treason, and serfs, in general, were too unimportant even to be able to commit this offense. Their punishments for most crimes were decided by local courts, in which it was sometimes possible for a person to be acquitted of the crime because he could get a dozen people to swear they thought he was innocent. Witch trials and such things were virtually unheard of until the Renaissance.

During the Middle Ages, times were hard. People were often undernourished and had to work hard. Weather, disease, and pests could all wipe out crops. Effective treatment for diseases was not known. A wise lord had good reasons to attend to the well being of the serfs who lived on his land, since his wealth depended on their products. A serf's life was not easy, but the greatest difficulties were probably not in the ways they were treated.