7 votes

How did English medieval peasants see themselves?

2 comments

  1. HotPants
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    How did English medieval peasants see themselves? A mirror! Or maybe a lake. Summarized from the transcript:

    How did English medieval peasants see themselves? A mirror! Or maybe a lake.

    Summarized from the transcript:

    The population of medieval England is hard to estimate the doomsday book that catalogued a huge amount of the country in 1086 only describes 283,000 people. Most of the population lived in rural areas and most peasants were serfs or free men or free slaves. Landlords today will buy a lot of land with rights over people that are living in it and they get the rent. In the medieval period slaves could be bought and sold as individual human beings for money with no reference to a piece of land in the Norman period. In medieval times a lord could control his serf in lots of different ways. He could force him to mill his grain at the lord's mill or he could tax him if he wanted to get married. Milling grain was a source of revenue for the lord but also discontent amongst the peasants. The typical medieval peasant lived as a lord's serf. If you were servile you had to work two or three days a week for the lord of the manor. If you were free you could do physical work for your lord, but not everyone lived in the menorial system.

    4 votes
  2. knocklessmonster
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    That was surprisingly complicated, and quite interesting. I figured it was all serfs, except for cities, but was uninformed on the topic.

    That was surprisingly complicated, and quite interesting. I figured it was all serfs, except for cities, but was uninformed on the topic.

    4 votes