First we must define what a peasant is ************************************** A peasant could also be a freeman, villein, serf or slave. All were commoners. In the Middle Ages, the majority of the population lived in the countryside, and some 85 percent of the population could be described as peasants. Peasants worked the land to yield their food, fuel, wool and other resources. Commoners ********* First of all, lets sort out the misconceptions about Commoners. 'Commoner' is a general term for the majority of the population that were, and still includes today, anyone who was not sitting on the throne, nor entitled to sit in the House of Lords. That's why in the English Houses of Parliament we have the 'House of Commons' and the 'House of Lords'. Peasants were all commoners, of course; but so were craftsmen, merchants, priests, militia, gentlemen, monks and knights. Many commoners were very rich and important (most were not). Serfs ***** Serfs in the middle ages were generally farmers who provided the manual labour on their master's land. The serfs would pay the lord dues in the form of labour, in exchange for using part of the lord's land to generate their own food. Serfs were bound to the manor and his status as a serf was passed on to his children, who would then continue to work in that same estate, regardless of whether the land changed ownership. They were not slaves, and they could not be bought and sold, but they could not leave the manor without permission. If they did not work, they were punished. If the manor land was sold or reassigned to a new owner, the serfs stayed with the land. Serfs had many jobs on the manor including craftsmen, bakers, farmers, and tax collectors - serfs did all kinds of jobs. Their jobs were assigned. They had to do the job they were assigned to do. Serfs could buy their freedom from the manor, but where would they get the money? Besides, in those violent times, being part of the manor offered a certain amount of protection. If a new lord took over the manor he would need all the serfs for labour, so it was a safe and secure (if harsh) place to be. These farmers would work in the lands at least five days a week and sometimes longer during the plantation and harvest seasons. Serfdom was introduced by the Roman Empire and most of the peasants in the Middle Ages were those who took over from their families who worked in Roman slavery. In the Middle Ages, some freemen offered their freedom and labour to the lord in exchange for protection against the tides of war, diseases and poverty. Nevertheless, serfdom was largely seen as an oppressive system that possessed characteristics of partial freedom and slavery. Within the middle ages manor or village where the serfs lived and worked there were several further stratifications, but farming was the full time occupation for the vast majority of the population. Peasants ******** Peasants were not bound like the serfs, and so were free to leave their place of work if they wished, but where would they go? conflict was everywhere. Peasants worked the land and made the goods in exchange for the lords protection. They might own their own business or have room enough for garden of their own. Other than that, their life was just like a serf's life. A few peasants escaped the hard work on the farm by joining the church, but most lived and died on the manor where they were born. Villeins ******** A villein or villain was the most common type of serf. Villeins had greater rights than the lower serfs. The lord allowed them to rent small houses but they would offer some of their time working in the lord's manor. They would spend the remaining time working in their own lands. There were other variations of villeins especially in middle ages Europe. There were half-villeins who had access to very small pieces of land for their use and they owed their lord complete labour. This would force them to serve in other serfs' pieces of land to compensate for the hardship. Villeins were of a lower status than of a freeman because the lord did not permit the villein serf to marry someone outside of the manor, or change homes or donate his property. The only way that a villein could become free would be to run way to the city or a borough. But this would incur harsh penalties including losing land rights, paying a high fine or loss of livelihood. Slaves ****** Essentially the slave was his master's possession and could be exchanged like a commodity. The only difference between a slave and villein was that the villein was not traded and he would not be dispossessed of his belongings. Cottagers ********* Cottagers or small holders were lower than the villeins because they only had access to small pieces of land, enough to feed a family. They were also not allowed to own horses or oxen while they lived within the enclosure of the manor. Smallholders ************ Other labourers included smallholders who would also rent very small pieces of land from the lord but they were not tied to the soil. Freemen ******* A Freeman was a man who was not a serf and not in bondage to a member of the nobility who owned the manor. Magna Carta [1215] gave rights to 'free men' that were not enjoyed by the peasantry. "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him. Except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice." Freemen were often enterprising smallholders, renting land from the lord, or even owning land in their own right, and able to make considerable amounts of money. The freemen did not owe labour to their lords but they paid rent in the form of agricultural products or money. If he rented his land he was called a copyholder, meaning that he had a lease. While he did not have the serf's obligations, he also did not always have the serf's rights, and might be put off his farm when his lease expired. At anytime freemen could decide to become villeins and surrender most of their rights to the manor. Often a freeman was given some land in return for services to the king. These freeman had fifteen strips of land in each field but in return he had to work to pay for it, help with the ploughing at harvest and help give out duties to Peasants. A freeman could leave the site without permission of the manor lord and could marry anyone, even from a different manor. Later on, especially after the Black Death [1350], a freeman became a citizen of a town or city and was usually a fully qualified craftsman who had successfully completed his apprenticeship in the city or town concerned. The crafts concerned ranged from goldsmiths at the upper end to tailors and bakers, who were often at the lower end. A handful of women were granted the status of freeman provided they were duly qualified. For example, there are a few cases of women who were made freemen because they were qualified to run a brewery. Yeomen ****** Originally, around the 11c, 'yonger men' roved the royal forests and is the first known use of the word yeoman, being associated with the forests (both greenwood and royal or manorial hunting forests). The chief forester of such royal forests was stationed at the nearest castle with his deputy foresters or yeomen assisting in the maintenance and affairs of the royal forests. The early yeoman may be considered as a middle class of sorts, in feudal or manorial service of the king or a lord, and perhaps as a link between nobility and the peasantry. By the 13c, Yeomen, who were also sometimes included in the group of freemen, owned their own farms, which were small, on the order of 30 to 120 acres, about 12 to 50 hectares. They did not not usually have serfs or tenants of their own, but they often did have servants and farm hands working for them and living on their farms. They were the first independent farmers in England outside the manors. A 'yeoman' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a 'customary tenant', in other words, a man who held his land by 'custom' rather than by the 'will' of the lord of the manor. This meant in practice that his land would pass from father to son automatically - the lord couldn't prevent the inheritance. Although now free of the manorial obligations of the peasantry, the two most important rights withheld by the manor were over wood and minerals - the yeoman couldn't cut down the trees on his land, or mine for coal and iron, without permission. These rights (as a major source of income) were usually jealously guarded by the lord of the manor (or landlord, as wills often describe him). The manorial court also held certain powers. Though this court might be chaired by a representative of the lord, the decisions were made by a jury of yeomen. In effect, these were an oligarchy who controlled life in the manor. They could, and did, fine (amerce) their fellow yeomen for minor crimes and failures. Yeoman was also a rank or position in a noble household, with titles such as Yeoman of the Chamber, Yeoman of the Crown, Yeoman Usher, and King's Yeoman. Most of these, including the Yeomen of the Guard, had the duty of protecting the sovereign and other dignitaries as a bodyguard, and carrying out various duties for the sovereign as assigned to his office. Medieval peasants and Farming ***************************** (Roughly 11c to 14c) The introduction of feudalism fostered the movement from town to country, for feudalism rested on the soil as its basis. The lord, his family, his servants, and his retainers were supported by the income from landed property. The country estate of these lords were known as a 'manor'. A manor varied in size according to the wealth of its lord. In England perhaps six hundred acres represented the extent of an average estate. Every noble had at least one manor; great nobles might have several manors, usually scattered throughout the country, and even the king depended on his many manors for the food supply of the court. England, during the period following the Norman Conquest, contained more than nine thousand of these manorial estates. Of the arable land of the manor the lord reserved as much as he needed for his own use. The lord's land was called his "demesne," or domain. The rest of the land he allotted to the peasants who were his tenants, They cultivated their holdings in common. A peasant, instead of having his land in one compact mass, had it split up into a large number of small strips (usually about half an acre each) scattered over the manor and separated, not by fences or hedges, but by banks of unploughed turf. The appearance of a manor when under cultivation has been likened to a vast checker-board or a patchwork quilt. The reason for the intermixes of strips seems to have been to make sure that each peasant had a portion both of the good land and of the bad. It is obvious that this arrangement compelled all the peasants to labour according to a common plan. A man had to sow the same kinds of crops as his neighbours, and to till and reap them at the same time. Farming dominated the lives of most Medieval people. Most peasants in Medieval England worked the land and, as a result, farming was critically important to the peasant family. Most people lived in villages where there was plenty of land for farming. Medieval towns were small but still needed the food produced by surrounding villages. Farming in the Middle Ages was very backward. Farmers did not know how to enrich the soil by the use of fertilisers or how to provide for a proper rotation of crops. Hence each year they cultivated only two-thirds of the land, letting the other third lie "fallow" (uncultivated), that it might recover its fertility. It is said that eight or nine bushels of grain represented the average yield of an acre. Manor lands were therefore farmed using the three-field system of agriculture. One field was devoted to winter crops, another to summer crops, and a third lying fallow each year. Peasants had specific work they had to do in each month and following through on this "farming year" diary was very important. Farm tools and implements were few and clumsy. The wooden ploughs only scratched the ground. Farrowing was done with a hand implement little better than a large rake. Grain was cut with a sickle, and grass was mown with a scythe. It took five men a day to reap and bind the harvest of two acres. Farm animals were small, for scientific breeding had not yet begun. A full-grown ox reached a size scarcely larger than a calf of to-day, and the fleece of a sheep often weighed less than two ounces. This general reliance on the local lord of the manor was all part of the feudal system introduced by William the Conqueror (William I). The Feudal system ***************** William divided up England into very large plots of land - similar to our counties today. These were 'given' to those noblemen who had fought bravely for him in battle. William argued that those noblemen who were willing to die in battle for him would also be loyal to him. However, the land was not simply given to these nobles. They had to swear an oath of loyalty to William, they had to collect taxes in their area for him and they had to provide the king with soldiers if they were told to do so. In the 11c, a sworn oath on the Bible was a very important thing and one which few men would dare to break as it would condemn them to Hell. The men who got these parcels of land would have been barons, earls and dukes. Within their own area, they were the most important person there. In the terms of the Feudal System, these men, the barons etc., were known as tenants-in-chief. These large pieces of land were large and difficult to govern. The barons etc. had to further divide up their land and these were 'given' to trusted Norman knights who had also fought well in battle. Each knight was given a segment of land to govern. He had to swear an oath to the baron, duke or earl, collect taxes when told to do so and provide soldiers from his land when they were needed. It was argued that because they had sworn an oath to their baron, they had really sworn an oath to the king. These lords worked to maintain law and order. The people in their land - or manors - were treated harshly and there was always the constant threat of Norman soldiers being used against the English people where they lived. The lords had to do their job well as unsuccessful ones could be removed from their position. Their job was simple, keep the English people in their place under the control of the Normans. Under the Feudal System, these men, the knights, were called sub-tenants. Both of these groups were officially tenants, a word we associate with land that does not belong to you. Both all but rented out their land in that they had to provide money or services to the real owner of all the land - William the Conqueror. At the bottom of the ladder were the conquered English peasants who had to do what they were told or pay the price for their disobedience. The Feudal System was sustained by the rights and privileges given to the Upper Classes and in most cases enacted by laws. Everything was a source of privilege for the nobles. The high ranking nobles lived in castles with their knights, ladies and retinues. Others enjoyed their daily life on their manors. The peasants, including serfs, freeman and villeins spent their daily life in a manor or village. Common Land *********** Besides his holding of farm land, which in England averaged about thirty acres, each peasant had certain rights over the non-arable land of the manor. He could cut a limited amount of hay from the meadow. He could turn so many farm animals such as cattle, geese, and swine on the waste ground. He also enjoyed the privilege of taking so much wood from the forest for fuel and building purposes. A peasant's holding, which also included a house in the village, thus formed a complete self-sufficient unit. Farming Life ************ A peasant family was unlikely to be able to own that most valuable of farming animals - an ox. An ox or horse was known as a 'beast of burden' as it could do a great deal of work that people would have found impossible to do. A team of oxen at ploughing time was vital and a village might club together to buy one or two and then use them on a rota basis. In fact, villagers frequently helped one another to ensure the vital farming work got done. This was especially true at ploughing time, seeding time and harvesting. The most common tools used by farmers were wooden ploughs (if they were lucky, metal tipped) for turning over the soil and harrows to cover up the soil when seeds had been planted. The use of manure was basic and artificial fertilisers as we would know did not exist. Growing crops was a very hit and miss affair and a successful crop was always due to a lot of hard work, but also the result of some good weather and a lot of luck. In the summer (the growing season) farmers needed sun to get their crops to grow. Though weather was a lot more predictable in Medieval England, just one heavy downpour could flatten a crop and all but destroy it. With no substantial harvest, a peasant still had to find money or goods to pay his taxes. But too much sun and not enough moisture in the soil could result in the crop not reaching its full potential. A spring frost could destroy seeds if they had been recently planted. The winter did not mean a farmer had an easy time. There were plenty of tasks to do even if he could not grow crops at that particular time. Some estates had a 'reeve' employed to ensure that peasants worked well and did not steal from a lord. Originally in Anglo-Saxon England the reeve was a senior official with local responsibilities under the Crown eg. as the chief magistrate of a town or district. Subsequently, after the Norman conquest, it was an office held by a man of lower rank, appointed as manager of a manor and overseer of the peasants. Historian H. R. Loyn observes, "In this role, the peasant is the earliest English specialist in estate management". Village Life ************ The peasants, including serfs, freeman and villeins, on a manor lived close together in one or more villages. Their small, thatch-roofed, and one-roomed houses would be grouped about an open space, the village "green", or on both sides of a single, narrow street. The only important buildings were the parish church, the parsonage, a mill, if a stream ran through the manor, and possibly a blacksmith's shop. The population of one of these villages often did not often exceed one hundred people. Perhaps the most striking feature of medieval village life was its self-sufficiency. The inhabitants tried to produce at home everything they required, in order to avoid the uncertainty and expense of trade. The land gave them their food; the forest provided them with wood for houses and furniture. They made their own clothes of flax, wool, and leather. Their meal and flour were ground at the village mill, and at the village smithy their farm implements were manufactured. The chief articles which needed to be brought from some distant market were salt, used to salt down farm animals killed in autumn, iron for various tools, and millstones. Cattle, horses, and surplus grain also formed common objects of exchange between manors. Life could be rude and rough. The peasants laboured from sunrise to sunset, ate coarse fare, lived in damp, cold huts, and suffered from frequent pestilences. They were often the helpless prey of the feudal nobles. If their lord happened to be a quarrelsome man, given to fighting with his neighbours, they might see their lands ravaged, their cattle driven off, their village burned, and might themselves be slain. Even under peaceful conditions the narrow, shut-in life of the manor could not be otherwise than degrading. Under feudalism the lords and nobles of the land had certain rights over Medieval Serfs and Peasants which included the right of jurisdiction, which gave judicial power to the nobles and lords and the right of hunting. There were positive points of peasants and their village life in the Middle Ages. If the peasants had a just and generous lord, they probably led a fairly comfortable existence. Except when crops failed, they had an abundance of food, and possibly cider to drink. They shared a common life in the work of the fields, in the sports of the village green, and in the services of the parish church. They enjoyed many holidays; it has been estimated that, besides Sundays, about eight weeks in every year were free from work. Festivities at Christmas, Easter, and May Day, at the end of ploughing and the completion of harvest, relieved the monotony of the daily round of labour. Family life *********** Living in a Medieval family wasn't all that it seemed to be. Everyone that was considered a part of the family worked. The "man" of the house rose at dawn or daybreak along with his wife and children. In the Early Middle Ages, 476 A.D. to 1000 A.D., the children did not go to school. The boys, if they wished and were smart enough, were able to go to school if their parents were wealthy. Boys who didn't go to school worked the land with their father. Girls stayed in the cottage and helped their mother with chores, cooking, and caring for the animals. The mother of the family was in charge of feeding and caring for the animals. She also was in charge of feeding the family, making clothes, and tidying the cottage. She rarely went to market, but rather, she generally waited for a peddler to come by. Her husband worked the land with his sons and brought the food and money into the house. If a husband was lucky enough to be a knight, of course he would usually be off at war or busy protecting the village. This was a very prestigious job and because he was nobility, he would not have to hunt or work the land with the commoners. Only commoners did the everyday work on the manor while the nobility reaped the benefits of it. Religious Holidays ****************** The religion of Christianity had been established in England during the Dark Ages. In the Middle Ages, following the Norman conquest, new stone churches and cathedrals were built. Religious festivals marked an event of religious importance for every month of the year. The rural peasants of the Middle Ages had their days of rest and amusement, which were then much more numerous than at present. At that period the festivals of the Church were frequent and rigidly kept, as each of them was the pretext for a forced holiday from manual labour. The illustrated calendars of medieval prayer books reveal that time was measured out by the movement of the heavens; by religious saints' days and feast days; and also according to the seasons and the agricultural cycle. Images of the Labours of the Months in calendars often show labourers pruning vines (March), reaping wheat (July), or knocking acorns from oak trees for pigs (October) which are later slaughtered (November); in other months, we see the gentry enjoying the benefits of this labour, for example feasting (January), or indulging in leisure activities. In April, gentlemen are sometimes shown hawking, and in May, elegantly dressed lovers are shown strolling in a meadow. A short calendar of Religious and other festivals: January: Twelfth Night. Religious festival and feasts celebrating the visit of the Wise Men, or Magi, following the birth of Jesus. February: St Valentine's Day. The Medieval festival celebrating love - singing, dancing and pairing games. March: Easter. Celebrated by the Mystery plays depicting the crucifixion. (Good Friday) and the resurrection (Easter Monday) April: All Fool's Day. The Jesters, or Lords of Misrule, took charge for the day and caused mayhem with jokes and jests! May: May Day. This was a spring festival celebrating May Day when a Queen of the May was chosen and villagers danced around the maypole. June: Midsummer Eve. The Mummers entertained at the 'Festival of Fire' reliving legends such as St George and the Dragon. Bones were often burned leading to the term 'bonfire'. The summer Solstice was June 23rd. July: St. Swithin's Day falls on 15th July. Legend says that during the bones of St Swithin were moved and after the ceremony it began to rain and continued to do so for forty days. August: Lammas Day. This was celebrated on August 2nd. The ' loaf-mass ' day, the festival of the first wheat harvest of the year. Houses were sometimes decorated with garlands and there were candle lit processions. September: 29th September was Michaelmas. This celebrated the life of St Michael and the traditional food on Michaelmas was goose or chicken. October: October 25th St Crispin's Day. Revels and bonfires and people acted as 'King Crispin'. November: The Day of the Dead. All Souls Day or All Hallow's Day ( Halloween ) when revels were held and bonfires were lit. December: Christmas celebrations. Hardships ********* The one thing the peasant had to do in Medieval England was to pay out money in taxes or rent. He had to pay rent for his land to his lord; he had to pay tithe to the church. This was a tax on all of the farm produce he had produced in that year. A tithe was 10% of the value of what he had farmed. This may not seem a lot but it could make or break a peasant's family. A peasant could pay in cash or in kind - seeds, equipment etc. Either ways, tithes were a deeply unpopular tax. The church collected so much produce from this tax, that it had to be stored in huge tithe barns. Some of these barns can still be seen today. Peasants also had to work for free on church land. This was highly inconvenient as this time could have been used by the peasant to work on their own land. However, the power of the church was such that no-one dared break this rule as they had been taught from a very early age that God would see their sins and punish them. The Domesday Book meant that the king knew how much tax you owed and you could not argue with this - hence why it brought 'doom and gloom' to people. After you had paid your taxes, you could keep what was left - which would not be a great deal. If you had to give away seeds for the next growing season, this could be especially hard as you might end up with not having enough to grow let alone to feed yourself. The lives of peasant children would have been very different to today. They would not have attended school. Very many would have died before they were six months old as disease would have been very common. As soon as was possible, children joined their parents working on the land. They could not do any major physical work but they could clear stones off the land - which might damage farming tools - and they could be used to chase birds away during the time when seeds were sown. Peasant children could only look forward to a life of great hardship. For all peasants, life was said to be "nasty, brutish and short." Diet and food ************* Medieval peasants had only a simple diet available to them. Most of the wheat they harvested went exclusively to the market, and peasant breads were made from barley and rye, baked into dark heavy loaves. Ales made from barley would quaff the thirst, as would water drawn from the well, sweetened with honey. Peasant society got what little proteins they could from peas and beans that would be added to bread and pottage. Pottage was often favoured over bread, because it did not require the grains that the miller guarded closely. Onions, cabbage, garlic, nuts, berries, leeks, spinach, parsley were some of the foods that would combined to make thick soup. Raw vegetables were considered unhealthy and rarely eaten, but anything that could grown, with the exception of known poisonous plants, were added to the mix. Lucky families may have added salt pork or fatty bacon for flavor and protein. Poorer society depended on these simple foods for survival. It was ironic that after the Black Death ravaged societies, even the poor could find wheat available as the population had been decimated. Medieval diets lacked vitamins A, C and D and were not high in calories, making the regular drinking of ale a necessity for most. The only positive part of these diets were that they were somewhat "heart-smart;" low in fat and high in fibre. Even so, the medieval world was usually a very hungry one. Famine ****** Medieval society always feared having a lack of food. Crop surpluses were rarely enough to create viable storage systems and even the greatest lord could not keep enough grain to outlast a famine. By the beginning of the 1300s the population had grown to such an extent that adequate amounts of food could only be grown under the best of conditions. There was no margin of failure for crops. The problem this century saw was a changing climate, with cooler and wetter summers and earlier autumn storms. Rumours of a famine usually preceded the actual crisis. Hoarding would begin and black markets for food would find plenty of customers. Bakers may try and fill bread loaves with fillers other than grain to match required weights and shapes. Malnutrition had always been present, few actually died, but the cold and wet springs and summers of 1315-17 decimated crops and all classes of society suffered. People resorted to killing their draft animals and eating seed grain for food, infants and the younger children were abandoned. Many of the elderly voluntarily starved themselves to death so that the younger members of the family might live to work the fields again. Dogs and cats disappeared, there were even rumours of cannibalism in some villages. Those that were near starvation ate what they could find, the last of their livestock, cats, dogs even vermin, and then finally fellow human beings; cannibalism manifested itself in prisons, urban settings and in the countryside; the practice of cannibalism was seen as a survival measure rather than a true crime by those who had nothing else to eat. Cemeteries had to be guarded against cannibals, hungry peasants would steal bodies, or parts of, for food; the livers, lungs, and other body parts were stolen from medical dissection rooms and prison guards would feed prisoners with the bodies of those who had died; in some places when the food supply was really low, meat pies were filled with meat and offal from the dead; whilst sales were stopped if officials found out, many hungry people would have become unknowing cannibals. Oddly enough, it was the Black Death that alleviated some concerns over famine, as the survivors found they had more food available as over half the population had died... Peasant Clothing **************** Middle Ages clothing, like everything else was dictated by the Pyramid of Power which was the Middle Ages Feudal System. Medieval clothes provided information about the status of the person wearing them. The head-dress worn by people during the Middle Ages immediately conveyed the rank of the person. Peasants were excluded here, and wore nothing on their head other than a cap for protection in winter. The clothing and fashion during the Medieval era of the Middle Ages was dominated and highly influenced by the Kings and Queens of the era. Only the wealthy could dress in fashionable clothes. Sumptuary Laws restricted people in their expenditure including money spent on clothes. Black's Law Dictionary defines Sumptuary Laws as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc." Traditionally, they were laws that regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions, often depending upon a person's social rank, on permitted clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. Peasant clothing was basic and practical. The dress of the men in the lowest ranks of society was always short and tight, consisting of breeches, or tight drawers, mostly made of leather, of tight tunics or doublets, and of capes or cloaks of coarse brown woollen. The tunic was confined at the waist by a belt, to which the knife, the purse, and sometimes the working tools were suspended. A Medieval Serfs clothing or dress consisted of a blouse of cloth or skin fastened by a leather belt round the waist, an overcoat or mantle of thick woollen material, which fell from his shoulders to half-way down his legs. Shoes or large boots, short woollen trousers and from his belt there hung a sheath for his knife and a purse. Medieval serfs generally went bareheaded, but in cold weather or in rain he wore a woollen hat. The simple cap was made of thick, coarse woollen cloth. In the early Middle Ages caps were also made of felt or sheep's skin. Gloves were only worn for their practical clothing value and were padded for use in tasks such as hedging. sources: en.wikipedia.org www.medieval-life.net www.historylearningsite.co.uk www.learner.org www.middle-ages.org.uk www.bl.uk