Medieval peasants enjoyed a surprising range of sick, annual and bereavement leave benefits

In medieval England, peasants on some estates were entitled to a range of sick, annual and bereavement leave that could rival those of many workers in the UK today.

British workers are among the least likely in Europe to take sick leave, and lose an estimated 44 days’ worth productivity every year through working while sick. And although most workers are entitled to at least 28 days of annual leave, there is currently no statutory right for employees to take bereavement leave except after the loss of a child under the age of 18.

By comparison – as our new paper shows – peasants on the estate of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire, England, were entitled to up to a year and a day of leave from working on the lord’s lands if they were sick. Meanwhile widows were granted leave upon the death of their husbands and workers enjoyed plenty of religious feast days and festivals every year.

Not all peasants enjoyed the same level of benefits. Leave entitlements were negotiated between lords and their tenants. Practices, therefore, varied between manors across medieval England. Elsewhere, arrangements were less generous than on the Ramsey estate, and tenants were more generally entitled to a fortnight or month of sick leave.

At the other end of the spectrum, some peasants received no leave if they were ill, such as the tenants of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, who were instructed that if “he is ill nevertheless, he will do the labour services he owes”.

Customary tenants – known as villeins – were required to perform unpaid work on the lord’s lands in lieu of rent. These obligations were known as labour services or “works”. Depending on the size of a tenant’s landholding, they might be required to work for between a day and three days per week.

The above entitlements did not constitute paid leave in the modern sense but, because tenants were not required to work on the lord’s lands while they were sick, they were effectively excused from many of their rental obligations.

When were peasants sick?

A high number of absences were recorded during the harvest on the Ramsey estate. This may have been for a variety of reasons, including that peasants were overworked and succumbed to exhaustion during the busy harvest season.

With tiredness, workplace accidents that resulted in infirmity were also more likely. Lords may even have been more diligent in tracking absences during the crucial harvest period because replacement labour was so expensive. Finally, tenants themselves may have exaggerated their own illnesses in examples of sick-leave fraud.

Although tenants were entitled to a year and a day of sick leave on the Ramsey estate, most absences did not run for nearly so long in practice. Some sicknesses were very short, such as that of Richard Berenger who was ill for just two days after the harvest in 1343. He missed half a “work” on the lord’s lands.

In contrast, others suffered chronic and debilitating infirmities, such as Richard Colleson of Warboys in Cambridgeshire, who was absent for an entire year in 1347/48, missing 156 “works”.

Such sick leave could cost the lord if they were forced to find a replacement worker. For example, in the absence of the ploughman who was sick for 84 days in 1420/21, the accounts of Battle Abbey in Sussex record a payment of 14 shillings to a man hired in his stead.

Alongside sick leave, tenants were also entitled to a range of other absences. Widows were granted 30 days of leave from performing their labour services upon the death of their husbands. In an unusual example of compassionate leave one Agnes le Reve of Upwood in Huntingdonshire was excused from a single work on two occasions in the winter of 1342/43 because of two deaths in her household.

Peasants also enjoyed a wide range of feast days and religious festivals. In theory, medieval people were not supposed to work on such days, though in practice some were fined in the church courts for working, often on their own lands or earning additional wages on someone else’s lands.

The number of feast days observed varied widely, even between neighbouring manors. On the Ramsey estate, this ranged from just a handful of religious festivals a year to an upper number of around 30.

We should not eulogise the lives of medieval peasants. They were subject to many restrictions which were greatly resented and resulted in punishments such as leyrwite – a fine on villein women for fornication. Yet, given the harsh and repressive realities of life for many medieval peasants, it is all the more surprising that at least some of them were entitled to such a wide range of sick, annual and bereavement leave.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Alex Brown, Durham University and Grace Owen, Durham University

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Research for this article was conducted thanks to funding from a Leverhulme Trust research project grant, 'Modelling the Black Death and Social Connectivity in Medieval England'.

Dr Grace Owen is a postdoctoral research associate on the Leverhulme-Trust funded project, 'Modelling the Black Death and Social Connectivity in Medieval England'.