What do we call people who worked the land for a lord?

The story behind the answer

In the feudal system, most rural people cultivated a lord’s fields and their own small plots. In return for protection and access to land, they owed rents, dues, and often unpaid labor on the lord’s demesne. This role distinguishes them from knights (mounted warriors bound by military service), artisans (skilled craftspeople in towns), and landlords (who owned land and collected rents rather than tilling soil).

These villagers could be free tenants or bound serfs, the latter tied to the manor with limited mobility. They farmed in the open-field system and paid church tithes. After the Black Death reduced Europe’s population, labor grew scarce, bargaining power rose, and uprisings like England’s 1381 revolt challenged traditional obligations, slowly reshaping medieval society.