Many of the peasants were treated harshly. They were not at all thrilled with the establishment of this new management. In addition to toiling on their lord’s land, they were often times called to labor on the Church’s property for free. Besides how they were treated, they had to get use to the new language spoken (French) as well as the different customs that the Normans brought. Like their predecessors, the peasants were still tied to the land. They essentially had nothing to claim as their own possession. As Ian Mortimer states in The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, these peasants “own nothing but their own bellies” (p. 49). They were under their lords’ jurisdiction and if asked to jump, their reply would have been “how high?”
