Socage in the context of Farmer

A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright (fee simple), or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.

In some contexts, "peasant" has a pejorative meaning, even when referring to farm laborers. As early as in 13th-century Germany, the concept of "peasant" could imply "rustic" as well as "robber", as the English term villain/villein. In 21st-century English, the word "peasant" can mean "an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person".The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s–1960s as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of developing countries in general, as the "semantic successor to 'native', incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones".

A lord paramount, in feudal law, is an overlord who holds his fief from no superior lord. Such a person holds allodial title, owing no socage or feudal obligations such as military service, in contrast to a mesne lord who holds his fief from a superior.

In old English law, a capite (from Latin caput, head) was a tenure in subinfeudation, by which either person or land was held immediately of the king, or of his crown, either by knight-service or socage. A holder of a capite is termed a tenant-in-chief.

Tenures in capite were abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660.