Hat tip to No Tech magazine for pointing us to the BBC documentary series, "Terry Jones' Medieval Lives." (All eight episodes available online.) If you have the time, watch the first one, titled "peasants." I took the following quote from the episode:
OUCH! That hurt a bit, didn't it?
Here it is, "The Peasant" episode:
But since the lord of the manor was often away from the estate fighting the kings wars, he had to be able to rely on his peasants to organize themselves.
"In many ways the medieval peasant had more say in how his life was run than most people do now."
Of course its a way of life that's all gone. Well, we'll never know what it was really like to live under such a system.
OUCH! That hurt a bit, didn't it?
Here it is, "The Peasant" episode: