The Relative Weakness of Serfdom and Lordship in Later Medieval England: The Example of Bredfield (Suffolk)

Abstract Historians dispute the nature of medieval English serfdom. For some, it represents one of the most powerful and pervasive systems of serfdom in medieval Europe, highly extractive of peasant surpluses: consequently, only concerted peasant resistance in the century after the Black Death could trigger its dissolution. Others, however, criticize this view for relying too heavily on the legal theory of villeinage and not enough on evidence for its practice on the ground: in reality, serfdom was relatively weak even at its peak and it dissolved rapidly through market forces in the wake of the Black Death. Such incompatible claims can only be resolved through more case studies, preferably focusing on the operation of the lord’s manorial court as the principal medium through which seigneurs enforced their legal powers over serfs. This article presents an empirical study of the manorial court rolls of Bredfield (Suffolk), a middling manor held by a lower status lay landowner. Such lordships were typical of English manorial forms, although they feature infrequently in the current scholarship on serfdom. The study reveals the relative weakness of serfdom on the eve of the Black Death and the chronology and reasons for its subsequent decline.