By colonial standards rural servitude was remarkably mild and loose in England. Although English servants were still members of their masters’ households, these households were usually in localities close to their homes, and the servants saw themselves essentially as hired labor. Their contracts with their masters were usually oral and bound them for only a year at a time. Servants moved easily and often from master to master, and many of them received wages and acquired property. This was not the servitude that most colonists either experienced or witnessed.
