A Manorialism

A political, economic and social system in medieval and early modern Europe; originally a form of serfdom but later a looser system in which land was administered via the local manor.

Manorialism or seignorialism was an organizing principle of rural economies which vested legal and economic power in a Lord of the Manor. He was supported economically from his own direct landholding in a manor (sometimes called a fief), and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction and that of his manorial court. These obligations could be payable in several ways, in labor (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), in kind or in coin.