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How did ordinary people cope with Medieval life? - Coggle Diagram
How did ordinary people cope with Medieval life?
Who are you in the village and what do you do?
In Medieval England, people lived under the Feudal System. At the bottom of this were peasants, and these made up the majority of people in Medieval villages. There were two different types of peasant, Freemen and Serfs.
Freeman:
A peasant who earned their own land or paid the Lord of the Manor to work on it, without having to provide manual labour. They would often pay the Lord of the Manor rent for the land.
Serf:
A peasant who provided manual labour in return for being able to use some of their masters’ land to grow food for their family. They had to work on the land for free for a certain amount of days a year, and if the owner of the land changed, they would have to work for the new owner.
Medieval Jobs - In the Medieval villages and towns, people did a range of different jobs. These included...
Carpenter - Built objects out of wood.
Pedlar - Went between villages and towns selling items.
Reeve - Supervised all the work on the manor, making sure all workers were working and starting on time.
Woodward - Looked after the forests and woodland.
Messor - Supervised the work in the fields.
Field Worker - Worked in the field sowing, ploughing and harvesting crops.
Servant - Employed in the Manor house to clean it and to serve the Lord.
Hayward - Looked after the village fences and hedges.
Blacksmith - Worked with metals like iron to create objects such as horse shoes.
What did people eat and own?
The rich would have a diet with a lot of meat, that included pork, goose, eel, honey, lamb and rabbit.
The poor would eat a diet based around what they grew or kept on their land, and this included eggs, bacon, pottage, black bread, cereal and cheese.
Medieval possessions included animals, tools, weapons, cooking pots, food bowls, a simple bed with a straw mattress, blankets and clothing.
Why was the church so important?
Nearly everyone believed that when they died, they would go to heaven and avoid hell if they did good deeds. This gave a lot of Medieval peasants hope.
The church was a meeting place, somewhere to find out the local news, and a place where people could marry, christen their children, and bury their dead.
Did men have better lives?
In some ways medieval women had tougher lives than men.
Men were expected to provide for women and could do more jobs and earn more money. This meant that women depended on their fathers and husbands to provide for them, and had to obey them.
However, rich medieval women had time for leisure activities, like dancing and music, and they ran large households.
Was life better in the towns?
Villages
The life of a village serf was hard. Work in a village began in the early morning and finished late at night.
Serfs were not allowed to leave the land, learn to read or write, or marry without the Lord of the Manor’s permission.
A peasant's hut was made of wood and mud, with a thatch roof but no windows.
However, village life was not all bad. Holy days meant a day off work.
Towns
Rich merchants chose a mayor and held markets.
Medieval shops were workshops, with the craftsman's house above.
Shops and houses were shut up at dusk.
If a serf ran away from his village to a town and remained free for a year and a day, he would become a 'freeman’.
However, the streets of a medieval town were narrow and busy, and there was a lot of crime.
The impact of the Black Death
Positive: Some freemen earned higher wages, and used them to buy land. They also used the wages to educate their children and buy more clothes and food.
Negative: Nearly 50% of the population was killed, with some villages being wiped out completely. Landlords made less money, and most people stayed working on the land.
The Peasants Revolt - 1381
This was another consequence of the Black Death. People demanded freedom but their lords refused.
King Richard II also imposed “poll taxes” that hit poor people the hardest. Rebels ransacked the homes of the rich and burnt tax records.
At first, the King agreed to the rebels' demands, but didn’t keep any of his promises, and the leaders of the revolt were killed.
What does the legend of Robin Hood tell us about how ordinary people coped with Medieval life?
There are a number of historical sources, from court records from the 1200s, to Chronicles written in the 1500s, that mention Robin Hood. Most say he was an outlaw.
However, the historian Patrick Middleton wrote in 1989 that ‘Until the Peasants Revolt in 1381, there is no mention of Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor. After this revolt over high taxes, the number of songs about Robin Hood increased, and most say that he was a peasant who fought wicked sheriffs to give money back to the poor.’
This suggests that ordinary people were unhappy with their situation, and therefore a legend was created to represent someone that did good, stealing money back from the rich to give to the poor. This, alongside the evidence above, suggests that ordinary people had a very tough time in Medieval England!