Alpha Book

[Sidenote: Free-Tenants]
As has been intimated, the manorial system was already on a steady
decline, especially in western Europe, at the opening of the sixteenth
century. A goodly number of peasants who had once been serfs were now
free-tenants, lessees, or hired laborers. Of course rent of farm-land
in our present sense--each owner of the land letting out his property
to a tenant and, in return, exacting as large a monetary payment as
possible--was then unknown. But there was a growing class of peasants
who were spoken of as free-tenants to distinguish them from serf-
tenants. These free-tenants, while paying regular dues, as did the
others, were not compelled to work two or three days every week in the
lord's fields, except occasionally in busy seasons such as harvest;
they were free to leave the estate and to marry off their daughters or
to sell their oxen without the consent of the lord; and they came to
regard their customary payments to the lord not so much as his due for
their protection as actual rent for their land.


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