Power and the people – revolting peasants

Posted on March 28, 2024 by JuliaH

The Black Death illustrated in the Toggenburg Bible – the plague of boils.

Up until now this series has explored the king’s relationship with his barons and elite members of society. In this post, medieval peasants finally find the lever they needed for change to happen – they died in droves…

But first a reminder. Medieval society worked on the premises of feudalism – the king sits at the apex, he owns everything. In return for land, the barons swear fealty to the king – this means that they will be loyal to him and provide him with troops and a variety of feudal dues. The barons sub-let their land to their own men. These lesser nobles and knights swear loyalty to the baron who gives them parcels of land. Knights and lesser nobility offer military service and loyalty to their overlords. At the bottom of the pyramid, the peasants work the land in return for protection, food, justice and shelter. Some of them are free men. They pay the lord of the manor rent and feudal dues.

Another group of peasants, approximately 40% of them, are villeins. In return for some land of their own, they have to work for the lord and are not free to leave the arrangement if they become dissatisfied. They are tied to the manor where they were born and raised. In addition to working for the lord of the manor all peasant are obliged to pay all manner of feudal dues, fees and fines. For instance, a villein needs his lord’s permission for his daughters to get married or for any of his family to leave their village. They are also required to pay fines to inherit their family lands and rights after the senior member of their family dies – in much the same way that the heirs of barons have to pay fines to enter into their inheritances.

Essentially a villein was somewhere between a freeman and a slave – remember that the Normans did not have slaves – I’m just using slavery as an example to demonstrate where villeins sat in the social order i.e. at the bottom of feudal society. The words villein and serf are often used interchangeably. It was possible to become a freeman by paying for freedom if you could save enough money or else villeins who ran away to a town and who remained free for a year and a day could not be forced to return to their former lord.

Magna Carta, the Provisions of Oxford and the parliaments of Simon De Montfort, Henry III and Edward I offered nothing to the peasants. They were in no position to make demands of their lords.

Things changed in 1348 when the Black Death, or bubonic plague, arrived on English shores. It is estimated that a third of Britain’s population died. It originated in China during the 1300s and was carried to Europe by merchant vessels. It arrived in England in June 1348 and moved north, infecting Wales and Scotland as it went. The Scots were initially delighted with the epidemic’s effects and thought that they could use the opportunity to invade England – which was, perhaps, something of an error. The first wave of the Black Death in Britain lasted until about 1350.

After the plague came famine and even more death. Harvests were bad not only because there weren’t enough peasants to look after the fields but because of changing climate which caused a so-called Little Ice Age during the fourteenth century. Many chroniclers thought that the end of the world was on its way.

Wharram Percy, to the north of York, is probably the best known example of a medieval deserted village in the country. The lord of Wharram Percy died when the plague had reached Yorkshire, in 1349. A third of the village died with him. Records show that the new lord of the manor was a minor and that only 45 people survived. The village never really recovered. It continued to shrink throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are many other examples of deserted medieval villages around the country – though not all of the depopulation was because of the Black Death, some of it was because farming methods changed – sheep farming was not so labour intensive.

The shortage of labour after the Black Death changed the relationships between the peasants and landowners and it also changed preferred farming methods – sheep became more common, landlords such as the Duchy of Lancaster in Derbyshire chose to rent its land to tenants rather than continuing to be the ‘farmer’ – there were fewer risks that way.

Peasants who survived, both freemen and villeins, often sought new lives for themselves away from the manors that their forefathers had been tied to. Landowners began to offer better wages and conditions. This was called commutation- or the replacement of one form of payment with another. It meant the substitution of wages for labour rather than the previous feudal practices of land and protection.

The Pastons, a famous medieval family from Norfolk, began their story as villeins. Clement Paston was born in about 1350. By the end of his life he was a free man – he was able to work for wages and no lord of the manor could dictate the manner by which he lived his life. He purchased land that had belonged to men who died from the plague, on the strength of his landholdings he was able to have his son William educated. William Paston eventually became a lawyer and then a judge. His wife, Agnes, was the daughter of a knight. Their eldest son, John Paston, became an MP and held Caister Castle. By the 1470s Clement’s grandsons were knighted and part of the royal household. This would have been unthinkable before 1348. Freedom from feudal bondage gave men the chance to rise.

It didn’t take long for the barons and the king to recognise the dangers of the feudal pyramid losing its base or the problems of peasants trying to improve their lives and positions in society. During 1349, an Ordinance of Labourers was issued. This became the Statute of Labourers in 1351 and fixed wages at pre-plague rates. It also determined that villeins must remain on the manor where they were tied. It proved an ineffective law. The Black Death was not responsible for the start of the change in method of payment but the plague did speed up the process of commutation and the decline of feudalism. Be warned though that not all historians agree about the extent to which feudalism declined because of the Black Death.

Once the changes began, peasants were often able to improve their living conditions and their status. In 1363 a Sumptuary Law was passed that shows the extent to which the elite were becoming alarmed by the changes going on all around them. The act decreed the quality and colour of cloth that people at different levels of society (below the nobility) could wear. It also tried to limit what ordinary people could eat. The law was impossible to enforce, but it is useful to show that for the ordinary men and women who survived the plague there was the potential of wealth from higher wages and from holding the lands of their neighbours who had died from the plague.

People and Power -part 2 – road to Magna Carta

Posted on March 5, 2024 by JuliaH

Medieval society, in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, was based on the feudal system. The king, was essentially owned his kingdom. Society worked on the basis that the king gave land and privileges to his tenants in chief, whether they were barons or bishops, in return for their loyalty and service. The tenants-in-chief then provided their knights with land. At the bottom of the heap were the peasants, who came in two varieties – free and serf. They had to work for their lord of the manor as well as paying fines and fees.

So far, so good. Ideally a medieval king was supposed to win battles, ensure that the country was peaceful by maintaining order, have good relations with the Church and the Pope, put down rebellions and have a good working relationship with his barons. Unfortunately, King John succeeded King Henry II who expanded his empire and Richard the Lionheart who was an excellent warrior and commander. John, on the other hand, lost his father’s empire when the French invaded in 1204 , ran out of funds trying to win back his territories and caused the barons to rebel. In fact, John had such a poor reputation as a warrior that he was nicknamed ‘Softsword’

In no particular order:

John quarrelled with the pope over the appointment of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, and ultimately got himself, and as a consequence, his country excommunicated.

Chronologies were written by monastic foundations and as a consequence of John’s poor relationship with the Church he was rarely written about in a positive light.

Richard the Lionheart left the country in debt in order to pay for the crusades but John needed even more cash to pay for the soldiers, equipment and transport to try and win back his European lands.

The barons were not pleased to have lost their territories in Normandy, less pleased to have to pay feudal dues including scutage, or shield tax, to fund a military campaign to try and retake the lost territories and did not appreciate John being permanently in England looking more closely at what was happening within the realm. Ultimately they would present him with the Magna Carta, a charter composed of 63 points based on King Henry I’s coronation charter.

GCSE Students – its really important to know this bit!
King John not popular especially as he did not live up to the medieval model of a king – he lost Normandy and most of the Angevin Empire.
He levied too many taxes including scutage.
The barons raised an army and threatened to rebel.
They presented him with the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, that identified 63 rules that they wanted John to abide by.
Clause 61 stated that a council of 25 barons would be created to ensure that John abided by the agreement which he signed on 19^th June 1215 at Runnymede.
The Magna Carta did not mean that everyone would have a say in running the country- only the most important barons.
John applied to the pope to have the agreement annulled. As a consequence, the Barons’ declared war and invited the French Prince Louis to be king instead. The First Barons War started.

feudalism and bastard feudalism

Posted on April 8, 2020 by JuliaH

Feudalism was the method by which society was structured across the tenth to thirteenth centuries. Essentially the tenant-in-chief was the monarch. William the Conqueror regarded the whole of conquered England as his along with the deer, the boar and the wolves who were owned by no one except God and since God had clearly given William England by right of Conquest then the large beasts which roamed the land must also be his….

The monarch then distributed land or fiefs to his lords – the lands varied in size and location. There was a promise of military and legal protection along with the land. In return the monarch’s tenants, or vassals, promised obedience through an act of homage and payment in the form of military service and/or goods. Sometimes a lord might pay for mercenaries to take his place rather than offering military service himself – this was called scutage. One of the advantages for William was that he was able to call on a large army when he needed one but it was not a standing army which he would be required to pay for – it also ensured that he was able to reward is supporters.

The lords or barons as medieval history tends to term them, who received land from the monarch often had more than they could manage themselves and in different parts of the country. These vassal of the king would sub-let land, manors and estates to their own adherents, the knightly class or less important barons, in return for loyalty, military service and goods. Just as the baron expected protection so the baron’s tenant would expect the lord to protect him militarily and legally as the lord was himself protected by the king.

The knights might in their turn give land to freemen to hold in return for goods and service.

All of the above would be served by peasants who might hold their land in return for labour and a percentage of their crops or by serfs who were tied to the land.

Clearly it was more complicated than this but this is the basic pyramid that we learn at school.

feudal pyramid showing numbers of people in the system and who gained what.

Bastard feudalism was not what a serf might describe the social structure as being (sorry – couldn’t resist.) Bastard feudalism developed during the fourteenth century and was at its most influential during the fifteenth century. This system was different from feudalism in that it was based on a contract that involved much more than land in exchange for service and loyalty. Edward III had the twin problems of the black death and a weakened kingdom thanks to his mother and her lover deposing his father.

Put very simply, the black death meant that there were insufficient villeins/serfs to work the land. Rather than being tied to the manor where they were born or having no choice in how much they were offered for their services, land owners now found that the people who worked their land were valuable commodities that had to be paid for.

Edward III needed the support of his nobility. He did not require another Mortimer situation on his hands. Therefore he gave his nobility more concessions than earlier medieval monarchs had done. This ultimately weakened the crown – again this is putting things at their most straight forward.

Titled noblemen or important members of the gentry (we’ve moved away from barons) developed networks or affinities as a consequence of the greater freedoms that Edward III had been forced to grant them. He also created the “super-noble” in the form of his royal sons who he made dukes. John of Gaunt’s Lancaster Affinity is the most widely signposted example of an affinity. Basically the person at the centre of the affinity created a network of retainers who provided him and his family with military service, domestic service and political and legal support – there was no prerequisite for land to exchange hands- the affinity was superglued into place by extended family – someone who was part of an affinity might reasonably expect an advantageous marriage to be arranged within the affinity either for themselves or their children. In return the network of retainers would expect protection, office, power and money. Bastard feudalism and the widespread use of these powerful networks was once the reason given for the Wars of the Roses – think of the feuds between the Nevilles and the Percys. However, it would be fairer to say that feudalism and bastard feudalism required a strong monarch to control the various factions.

An additional factor in the equation of bastard feudalism and social structure is the Hundred Years War. When the English were winning it was an opportunity for younger sons and those lower down the social ladder to gain wealth which they spent on upping their position within the social hierarchy. Militarily talented men might gain battlefield knighthoods and jump up the social ladder at a stroke but they would need the patronage of someone more powerful if they were to continue their upward journey. Then when the English ultimately lost the Hundred Years War there were powerful nobles who had financed armies and put men in the field who were now looking for political influence. Again, I have presented the case in its most straight forward format.

Year seven pupils (eleven-year-olds) are required to have a grasp of the feudal pyramid as a social structure introduced by William the Conqueror. Clearly social structures were more complicated than this. The Church needs to fit into the equation along with the merchant classes and the impact of a changing economy.