The Franchise Should Be Limited

[HoreTore]

The exact details of serfdom varied from place to place and decade to decade.

Still, serfs were owned. You could go technical and say the serfs was owned by the property which in turn was owned by the landowner, but meh. They could also be bught and sold along with the property. Typically, a serf was not allowed to gain any personal property; everything he "owned" was owned by the landowner. It wasn't the landowner who got a cut, it was the serf who got a cut; typically just enough to sustain himself. Cities became paradises to serfs - if they managed to sneak some of the produce away and accumulate a small amount of wealth, they would run away to the city. If they managed to hide in the city for a full year, they'd be free from their serfdom. If they got caught, they got executed, of course...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Also PVC, I feel I must clarify my use of "crap". Medieval farmers enjoyed few of the freedoms I take for granted today, so in that respect their lives were crap. Kinda like the people I lived with in Tanzania - by "all accounts" their lives were horrible. Ask them, however, and they were quite happy. Just like I'm sure the medieval farmers were quite happy, if you don't count famine years.

That's very qualified - don't forget that serfs have a guaranteed home and source of income - something people don't have today even in the most Socialist countries in Europe.

Serfdom was part of the Feudal system - where all means of production were ultimately owned by the State (Monarch) and then leased to tenants. One thing people forget about Feudalism was that it was essentially a decentralised system. The King owned everything, he leased to Tenants-in-Chief who leased to Tenants, who leased to sub-Tenants. The vast majority of serfs were under a rural knight they likely either knew personally or had at least met on Feast Days or at Court. Even the large landowners, such as the Berkeleys and the De Spencers visited their estates regularly and took an interest in the locals, often sponsoring the more promising young men to go to university, or taking them into service.

The exact details of serfdom varied from place to place and decade to decade.

Still, serfs were owned. You could go technical and say the serfs was owned by the property which in turn was owned by the landowner, but meh. They could also be bught and sold along with the property. Typically, a serf was not allowed to gain any personal property; everything he "owned" was owned by the landowner. It wasn't the landowner who got a cut, it was the serf who got a cut; typically just enough to sustain himself. Cities became paradises to serfs - if they managed to sneak some of the produce away and accumulate a small amount of wealth, they would run away to the city. If they managed to hide in the city for a full year, they'd be free from their serfdom. If they got caught, they got executed, of course...

No - fundamentally wrong. Serfs were not owned, slaves were owned, and the distinction was a sharp one. Serfs were not free, but that was because of the conditions of the lease they held, which they could not sell, and which required them to work their landlord's land as well as their own. In England at least a serf could become as wealthy as a free man by selling his surplus at market and using that to buy small freeholds. Eventually he might be able to buy his own land's freehold from his Lord (at a very high premium) and that way he could secure legal freedom.

The city thing is something I've never heard before, but it can't be true in England because Freedom of the City is still something granted, and not an automatic right. I am not a "free" man in that sense, although my father has a Freehold and as a graduate of a university I am officially outside the yeoman class, I'm still not a Freeman of the City of Exeter.

What you are describing sounds like the Reaissance's last gasp of the system on the Continent.

Have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

Oh - and because I have a big ego - I typed all that from memory, then I looked up wiki and low, we agree.

Edit: OK, found the bit about Borough Towns (not cities specifically). That does ring a bell now, pesky Anglo-Saxon laws I suppose. Nevertheless, how common that was is debatable and the key point is that the serf was within the Borough for a Year and a Day, not that he was away from his Lord.