Today Europe is divided into many countries. But from about the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, it was like a single country. It was divided into great estates, and the people who lived on them didn’t think of themselves as Frenchmen, Germans, or Englishmen. Instead, each man owed loyalty to his landlord, and the landlord owed it to a still greater landlord, and the greatest of all owed it to the king.

The local lords who ruled over vast estates did not wish to have the trouble and expense of administering the whole of their estates.

But since they needed supporters and fighting men, they granted pieces of land to men of noble birth who swore an oath of allegiance to them. These men were the knights. The land owned by a knight was called a manor. Some knights didn’t own land but were supported by a lord at his castle.

Under the lord of the manor were the serfs and the villeins. The serfs had to stay on the manor. When land was bought and sold, the serfs were included. They worked the lord’s land, but he didn’t feed or clothe them. Instead, he gave them bits of land which they worked as their own. These lands could not be taken away from them, and their children could inherit them by paying a fee to the lord. The villeins were serfs who pay a fixed sum to the lord for their land instead of paying taxes on what their land produced, as the serfs did.

The manor was self-supporting, which means the people didn’t have to import anything from other manors in order to live. The lord provided flour mills, wine presses, and sheepfolds which the serfs used, but paid for.

If the lord was a good one, the serfs could live fairly comfortable lives. They worked long and hard, but they were protected by the lord, and their needs were taken care of. In fact, when the feudal system began to break up, it wasn’t so much a result of the serfs rebelling as it was that the lords began to object to the powers of the king. Parliaments were started, nations were born, and serfs soon became free.