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A Peasant’s Life. 1066–1500. This icon indicates the slide contains activities created in Flash. These activities are not editable. For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation. Learning objectives. This presentation covers: What life was like in a medieval village.
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A Peasant’s Life 1066–1500 This icon indicates the slide contains activities created in Flash. These activities are not editable. For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.
Learning objectives This presentation covers: • What life was like in a medieval village. • How peasants farmed the land. • How the peasants worked over a year.
The village The vast majority of people in England at this time lived in the countryside. There were very few towns in England and most people made their living from the land. Most people lived in manors. The manor was an area of land that could sometimes include more than one village. The Normans who invaded England soon became the lords of these manors. The English were the peasants.
Who lived in the village? Not everyone in the village farmed. Some peasants had important jobs such as the miller and the blacksmith. How important you were in the village dependent upon your occupation (job). Some positions in the village were high up. Obviously the lord of the manor was the most important person, but the priest was also important because the church was very influential in all people’s lives.
Who worked on the lord’s land? The general term for people who worked on the lord of the manor’s land was peasants. They could be divided into villeins and freemen. The villeins worked on the lord’s land, and in return they had their own land to farm. The freemen paid rent to the lord to have their own land.
Growing crops Most of the land in the village belonged to the lord of the manor. The lord kept some of the land for his own crops; this was called his demesne. The rest of his land was let to the villagers. The fields were divided into strips. This was so that everyone had a fair share of the good and bad land.
How the peasants farmed Few farmers could afford the eight oxen needed to pull the plough, so they grouped together and ploughed everything at once. This meant that peasants needed to be very good at working collectively (together) oxen yoke plough
All the sowing and harvesting had to be done at the same time. The corn was cut with sickles and threshed with flails. It was then taken to the lord’s mill to be ground. The hay was cut with scythes. scythe
The peasant’s life As well as the specific chores, peasants also had to dig and maintain drainage ditches, look after their animals, make repairs to their house, tend their gardens and collect firewood all year round. On top of all this, peasants had to do their services to the lord – usually three days a week ploughing and other jobs.
Life was certainly hard for peasants, but the problems did not end there. The lord of the manor had a great deal of control over his peasants. A villein could not marry without his permission, nor could a villein travel beyond the village without permission. (Freemen could!) Peasants also had to make payments for certain things. To stop fires, ovens for baking bread were controlled by the lord and had to be paid for. All the peasants had to use the lord’s mills, using your own hand mill would mean you would be punished! Even brewing your ale had a price. Ale tasters had to check it before it could be sold.
