Originally by: Hax Zoidberg

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No such thing happened historically. Probably because any lord exercising such a right would have soon after been chopped to pieces by the peasants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur

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You are very wrong, fact is that it wasn't written in any law and it wasn't anything official, but in the feudal system, the lord could do almost anything he wanted with his subjects as per the "Ius Maletractandi" (lord's right to mistreat his servant). Some of those were officially recognized, while others were just traditional and oral, not written anywhere. It might or might not been a feud that practiced it, but we can find a few documents forbidding the practice (ie: The arbitral sentence of Guadalupe), what leads to think that someone forced the prohibition.

Foremost, there was this "tradition" of violating women from inferior establishments institutionalized by the lord. All of this changed in the XII century, when canonic matrimony were recognized to feudal servants (until then, god blessing was reserved to nobility only) and they started to claim their rights and breaking the silence law that prevailed until then. A bad habit, a privilege, a feudal right becomes a crime.

In resume, it probably happened in some cases before catholic marriage was allowed; it indeed happened although not necessarily on the wedding night; it did raised riots (ie: Remensa peasant's riot in Spain); and it wasn't a recognized right, but a tradition, a consequence of the full submission to the lord, and the fear to his power. What you seem to forget is that peasants had very little power against the lord, so they accepted every abuse and thought that was the natural order of things, specially on the early medieval. It's like muslim's women nowadays, they accept their position as god's will.