Free peasants were already in the majority in France before the Black Death. Abolition had occurred less from any moral judgment of the evils of servitude than as a means of raising ready money from rents. Though the paid labor of free tenants was more expensive than the unpaid labor of serfs, the cost was more than made up by the rents, and, besides, tenants did not have to be fed on the job, which had amounted to an important expense.
