[ichabod1]

Yeah, but a serf couldn’t leave and he had to let the master have first night privileges, if he got married.

[little jeremiah]

Actually, the first night privileges are largely, if not wholely, a myth.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1139/did-medieval-lords-have-right-of-the-first-night-with-the-local-brides

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur

Droit de seigneur - “the lord’s right”, often conflated with the Latin phrase “Jus primae noctis”), is a term now popularly used to describe an alleged legal right allowing the lord of an estate to take the virginity of his serf’s maiden daughters. Little or no historical evidence has been unearthed from the Middle Ages to support the idea that it ever actually existed.

I’ve read a small amount (compared to actual scholars etc) of contemporaneous medieval documents in books and have never even seen that mentioned.