What do we call the everyday work and duties owed by peasants to a lord?

The story behind the answer

Peasants in the manorial system owed days of unpaid work to their lord on the demesne: plowing fields, harvesting grain, maintaining roads and mills, and performing seasonal “boon work” during peak times. This obligation was about providing labor, not money or produce, and it was central to how estates functioned economically before widespread cash rents.

It differed from a tithe (a church levy of roughly one-tenth), manorial rent (payments in cash or kind for holding land), and tribute (political submission to a superior power). In many regions this duty paralleled the corvée—compulsory labor demanded by authorities. Over time, especially after the Black Death tightened labor markets, some of these obligations were commuted into wages or rents, reshaping medieval social relations.