Peasants Vs Serfs

How did the life of a Serf differ from that of a slave or a peasant?

Intro:
In c.1300 at least one half of England’s population was filled with serfs, and around one half of all the land was held on servile tenure. Serfdom had placed economic burdens upon most peasants, therefore becoming an extremely exploitative system. The distinction between the ancient slave and the medieval serf in law and custom was that the slaves who were enslaved in ancient times were considered to have died. However, in contrast with the serfs, they were free except for the obligations owed to their lords and the rights their lord claimed over. The life of a serf from the late Middle Ages differed from peasants/ slaves through political burdens, land, and freedom.

83 Yet such equal division of family lands among the testator 's heirs was not generally the practice in late-medieval England, being in fact comparatively rare, and it is just as likely that the Wealden houses were an expression, once again, of the exceptional energy of the peasant land-accumulators whose exploitation of land surpluses following the Black Death had raised them up into a new yeomanry. It was men of this class who, when the time came, were both ready and willing to take on the leases of the archbishop of Canterbury 's demesnes, and although some were required, by the terms of their leases, to keep the old manorial buildings in repair, most would have accepted only what they needed of those buildings, preferring for themselves the modern timber-built farmhouses which they could now very obviously afford. https://www.questiaschool.com/read/109070648/medieval-england-a-social-history-and-archaeology Analysis:
Serfs were not immune to the Black death, impacted economy
Peasants were unhappy with the rights, caused rebellion / land hungry

Relevance:
Peasants had more of a say, majority were peasants
Serfs faced the Black Death, losing the majority of the population

Body 2: land

Topic Sentence: As serfs had better social

http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/serfdom.html
Peasant/Slave
And it was the coincidence of peasant land-hunger with economic adversity and with the seigneurial oppressions such adversity provoked, that led in its turn to peasant discontents and to popular rebellions on anal together more dangerous scale. Just as soon, that is, as the major landowners began to take the initiative in the quashing of illegal land transfers on their estates, becoming active in this way from the early fourteenth century when their revenues seemed already at risk, they turned the village main families against them. 74 Nor should it be surprising that one of the leaders of the peasant rebellion of 1297 on the Bec manor of Weedon was none other than John Brockhall, quoted above (p. 106) as a successful accumulator of abbeylands. https://www.questiaschool.com/read/109070648/medieval-england-a-social-history-and-archaeology&sa=D&ust=1456416155675000&usg=AFQjCNEzmCszFv55ptZ49t5Kkx5A_DEE_A Analysis:
Serfs worked on land to pay debt (usually rarely getting out) peasants were land hungry, but were discontent and rebelled

Relevance:

peasants had more of a say than slaves of the time (serfs)

Body 3: