The lord of the manor and the peasants
The most important man in the village was the lord of the manor. (Manor is another word for village.) The land belonged to the lord, and the peasants had to pay him rent.
Most peasants were villeins. Villeins were not free, nor were their wives and children. They could not leave the village unless the lord of the manor said so. They paid rent to the lord by working two or three days a week on his land. Many of them paid money as well, and they had to give him hens at Christmas and eggs at Easter. At harvest time, they did extra work, called 'boon days'. (Where does the modern word 'villain' come from?)
A villein's corn was milled in the lord's mill, and the lord got a share of the flour. If a villein's daughter got married, the villein paid money to the lord. And when a villein died, his son had to give the lord the family's best ox or cow.
The village reeve made sure that each man did the right amount of work for the lord. If there was a quarrel between two peasants, it was settled in the lord of the manor's court. Men, or women, who had done wrong ended up in the village stocks. The same happened to reeves who did not do their jobs properly.
Freemen were better-off peasants. (There were a lot of freemen in the south east of England.) They paid rent in money to the lord of the manor, but had to do little or no work on the lord's land. And they could leave the village if they wished.
Cottars and bordars, on the other hand, were worse off than villeins. They had far less land in the open fields, and earned money by working for wages on the lord's land. Like villeins and freemen, they could keep cattle and sheep on the common.
Walter Robson: Medieval Britain; Oxford University Press, 1991/2000, page 52