This is a question that depends not only on the place and the period, but in most cases on the personal relationships between the specific tenant and their specific lord.

The basis of what we typically call the 'Feudal' system was service. Service obligations formed the backbone of tenancies throughout all strata of society: lords typically held land in return for their personal - usually military - service to the King, and tenants held land from them in return for further service. Pre-Conquest English charters often cite the Trimoda Necessitas; the provision of manpower to maintain fortresses and watch stations, carry out repairs on roads and bridges, and serve in the militia. The 10th Century Rectitudines Singularum Personarum suggest a number of service obligations including the aforementioned Trimoda as well as fleet service for ship crews and the maintaining of a coastal watch. In a more agrarian context, the most common type of rent was service; tenants held their land in return for carrying out a certain number of days' labour on their lord's land a year. Some rents took the form of food renders; these were most common in royal vils, the network of estates throughout England designed to support the king and his retinue as he travelled around the country on the perennial circuit of itinerant kingship. Ryan Lavelle's work on 'Farms of One Night' is an excellent look at this phenomenon.

Other obligations and dues existed, of course, which could depend on location, situation and skills. Multure was a fee typically paid as a proportion in kind for use of mills. In 13th Century Chester, farmers owed some 15% multure to the burghers of Chester whose mills they used; at Wareham in Dorset it was only 10%, paid to the lord who built the mill on the River Piddle abutting the town's North Walls.