Describe life on the manorial system for lords and serfs.

The lord would grant part of his land out to free tenants to hold at a rent or by military or other service. Below the lord and the free tenants came the villeins, serfs, or bondmen, each holding a hut or small dwelling, a fixed number of acre strips, and a share of the meadow and of the profits of the waste. Normally the peasant was unfree; he could not without leave quit the manor and could be reclaimed by process of law if he did. The strict contention of law deprived him of all right to hold property, and in many cases he was subject to certain degrading incidents, such as marchet (merchetum), a payment due to the lord upon the marriage of a daughter, which was regarded as a special mark of unfree condition.