Serfs, under the feudal system a class of labourers whose position differed only from that of slaves in being attached to the soil and so protected from being sold from hand to hand like a chattel, although they could be transferred along with the land; liberty could be won by purchase, military service, or by residing a year and a day in a borough; these and economic changes brought about their gradual emancipation in the 15th and 16th centuries; mining serfs, however, existed in Scotland as recently as the 18th century, and in Russia their emancipation only took place in 1861.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Serbonian Bog * Seringapatam