The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
For the later middle ages at least, reality was a little more
complicated.
The Black Death in 1348 effectively broke the old feudal system of
holding land through service to one's lord. Before the plague,
population was growing and there was intense pressure on land to feed
everyone. Labour was plentiful and therefore the owners of land could
enforce the old terms of bondage and service. After the pestilence came
the population crashed and large areas of land went uncultivated.
Labour became the scarce commodity and consequently its value rose.
Peasants were able to demand their own terms and if a lord refused,
another would agree as their own wealth and status depended on what
their land could produce. Rent of land through service was increasingly
commuted to more secure tenure paid for with hard cash. Coin assumed a
far greater significance in everybody's lives than it ever had before.
Around the same time, something else was going on which would also help
to change the lives of poor people in England. In the 1330s Edward III
began to lay his plans for war with France. Military service at
home paid badly and meant fighting the Scots who were poor as church
mice and hardly worth the effort of robbing. But France was a different
kettle of fish. Wages for service abroad were attractive. A bowman in
Edward III's army could earn as much as 6d a day – equal to a
skilled artisan back home. This was a great incentive for men who often
could only hope to earn half that. But equally important, France was a
rich and prosperous country. The possibilities for plunder were
boundless.
English victories at Crécy in 1346 and Poitiers ten years later
stimulated a love of war in Englishmen. For poor men, soldiering became
a viable career. A lowly archer who arrived in France with little more
than a bow and the backside hanging out of his hose could, through
pillaging, despoiling the dead and general thuggery, enrich himself
considerably. And in times of truce he could join one of the free
companies who either hired themselves to the highest bidder or who
plundered and ravaged on their own account. He could equip himself with
good gear well above his nominal social status.
This was not just vanity. Campaigning is hard on equipment and clothing
alike and why settle for inferior quality if better will save your
skin? Both the battlefield dead and the fine house could provide
everything from boots to helmet and if not, plundered money and jewels
could buy it. In addition, the increase in lowly soldiers with cash to spend
led the armourers of Germany and Italy to produce cheaper off-the-peg
stuff to supply the market, allowing more men to acquire good
equipment, and blokes flush with money are always looking for that
better piece of kit to impress their mates!
In addition to profits from the dead, there was also money to be made
out of the living. Capturing an enemy nobleman could net a substantial
ransom. The business of obtaining ransoms, though, could be a complex
and drawn out process. But captives could always be “sold”
outright to one's lord, who had the time and resources to pursue payment, in
return for straight fee. There was even trading in ransoms,
some soldiers acting as brokers, linking appropriate ransomers with
appropriate captives and taking a cut out of the deal.
And if plunder was not enough, serving in the retinue of a great
lord would make up for it. English nobles were always looking to
demonstrate their own status and outdo their peers, and one of the ways
they did this was to equip their own retainers in the best clothing and
armour they could afford. Archers were often recruited as bodyguards
and as such reaped rewards of gifts, cash payments and grants of land
that were not available to the common soldier.
Archers at the end of the hundred years war were a far cry from the
bare-footed, ragged Welsh levies raised by Edward I for his Scottish
campaigns 150 years earlier. Many owned a horse, good equipment and
good clothes. Those that managed not to gamble or drink all their gains
could return home and put their wealth to good use renting a small parcel of land and
living off the profits in the developing cash-oriented economy.
So, although it is important to remember that late medieval society was
still highly structured, that structure was not fossilized. The
constant
re-issuing of sumptuary laws during the middle ages only proves that
the government was fighting a losing battle against people who would
not act according to their supposed station in life. The common people
were getting richer and they wanted to flaunt it.
Mike Pritchard
