They also hunted wild boar with spears. Both men and women went hawking. In the evenings they feasted, danced, and played board games such as chess and backgammon. In the midth century playing cards arrived in England. When he was not hunting the noble or knight was fighting. Their wives were also kept busy. They had to organize the servants and generally run the household. Knights also took part in tournaments.
These events drew large crowds of spectators. At them, knights fought with wooden lances, swords, or maces. This was called jousting. There were also tourneys fights between teams. Tournaments often lasted four days. Two days were for jousting, one was for tourneys and one was for archery competitions.
Children from noble families saw little of their parents. When they were very young nurses looked after them. When they were about 7 they were sent to live with another noble household. Boys became pages and had to wait on lords and ladies.
They also learned to fight. At 14 a boy became a squire and at 21 a knight. Girls learned the skills they needed to run a household. In upper-class families, young men and women did not normally choose their own marriage partners. Their parents arranged their marriage for them. Children from poor families might have more choice about who they married but by the time they were about 7 or 8 they had to start helping their parents by doing simple jobs such as chasing away birds when crops had been sown or helping to weave wool.
Children were expected to help the family earn a living as soon as they were able. Most people in the Middle Ages lived in small villages of 20 or 30 families. The land was divided into 3 huge fields. Each year 2 were sown with crops while one was left fallow unused to allow it to recover. Each peasant had some strips of land in each field. Most peasants owned only one ox so they had to join with other families to obtain the team of oxen needed to pull a plow.
After plowing the land was sown. Men sowed grain and women planted peas and beans. Most peasants also owned a few cows, goats, and sheep. Cows and goats gave milk and cheese. Most peasants also kept chickens for eggs.
They also kept pigs. Peasants were allowed to graze their livestock on common land. In the autumn they let their pigs roam in the woods to eat acorns and beechnuts. However, they did not have enough food to keep many animals throughout the winter.
Most of the livestock was slaughtered in autumn and the meat was salted to preserve it. However, life in the Middle Ages was not all hard work. People were allowed to rest on Holy days from which we get our word holiday. During them, poor people danced and wrestled. They also played a very rough form of football. There were no rules so broken limbs and other injuries were common. A bear was chained to a post and dogs were trained to attack it. Gambling was also common. Norman knights wore chain mail, armor made of iron rings joined together.
In the 14th-century chain mail was replaced by plate armor. Metal plates were attached to each part of the body. Norman knights carried kite-shaped shields. Later in the middle Ages shields became smaller. The Normans built wooden forts called motte and bailey castles. An artificial mound of earth was created, called a motte and the living quarters were built on top.
Below was a walled yard called a bailey where food and animals were stored. The whole thing was sometimes protected by a moat.
However, these early wooden forts were vulnerable to fire and later castles were built of stone. In the center was a stone tower called a keep where the inhabitants lived. Surrounding it was a curtain wall. However, even if attackers breached the curtain wall the defenders could retreat into the keep and continue to hold out.
The weakest part of a castle was its gate but there were ways of strengthening it. A building called a gatehouse was built. Often it was approached by a drawbridge over a moat. Gatehouses usually had an iron grid called a portcullis that could be raised or lowered vertically.
Behind the portcullis was a covered passageway running through the gatehouse. Sometimes there was a second portcullis at the other end of the passageway.
If you got past the drawbridge and the first portcullis you would have to fight your way to the second portcullis and the defenders would not make it easy for you. In the roof were holes through which the defenders could drop stones or pour boiling liquids.
Around the curtain wall were arrow slits called embrasures. Furthermore, the tops of the castle walls often had overhangs. In them were openings through which boiling liquids could be poured or stones could be dropped.
They were called machicolations. However, attackers could use a variety of siege weapons. The simplest was a battering ram. The users were protected by a wooden shed but the defenders might set it on fire. To climb the walls you could use ladders but that was dangerous as the defenders could push them over. Attackers might use a wooden siege tower on wheels.
Inside it were ladders for soldiers to climb. At the top was a drawbridge. When it was lowered the attackers could swarm over the castle walls. Attackers could also use a kind of crane called a tenelon to get over the wall. On the end of a long wooden arm was a basket containing soldiers.
The basket could be swung over the castle walls. The attackers could also hurl missiles. A Medieval catapult was powered by a twisted rope. The rope was twisted tighter and tighter then released, firing a stone. Another siege weapon in the Middle Ages was called a trebuchet. It worked by a counterweight. It was a kind of see-saw with a huge weight at one end and a sling containing a missile at the other.
Attackers could also tunnel under the castle walls. The tunnels were supported by wooden props. When ready they were covered in animal fat and burned. The tunnels would collapse and hopefully so would the walls. However, in the 14th century warfare was changed by the longbow. Longbows were not new archaeologists have found examples thousands of years old.
However, in the 14th century, the English learned to use the longbow in a new way. They were used that way at Hastings. However, in the 14th century, the English devised a new tactic of having dismounted knights to protect the archers and allowing the enemy to charge. The enemy cavalry was decimated by volleys of arrows. The longbow was used to win decisive victories at Crecy , Poitiers , and Agincourt An archer could shoot an arrow every 5 or 6 seconds.
He could shoot an arrow accurately up to meters. An arrow could penetrate armor at 90 meters. The one disadvantage of the longbow was that it took years to learn to use one properly. In the Middle Ages roads were no more than dirt tracks that turned to mud in winter.
Men traveled on horseback if they could afford a horse! Ladies traveled in wagons covered in painted cloth. They looked pretty but they must have been very uncomfortable on bumpy roads as they had no springs. Worse, travel in the Middle Ages was very slow. A horseman could only travel 50 or 60 kilometers a day. Some goods were carried by packhorses horses with bags loaded on their sides and peasants pulled along two-wheeled carts full of hay and straw. However, whenever they could people traveled by water.
Large scale landlords and small scale producers who were able to sell a surplus had an opportunity for profit. The growth of population as well as trade also helped expand and establish larger villages and towns. Long distance trade was still quite limited in the thirteenth century and developed at a different pace throughout the country.
However, wool was exported to Flanders and for those who could afford such a luxury, wine was imported from Gascony. From Scandinavia came expensive furs and stone from Caen was imported and used for mouldings and carvings in Westminster Abbey. The best ships in the British Isles in this period were built in Ireland and in the first half of the century a number of galleys were built there for John and Henry III.
These, however, were war ships, trade was carried out by a variety of ships but probably often by cogs. These were clinker built, with a flat bottom and a single sail. In estuaries and inland waterways many boats built for carrying goods and passengers operated.
Large boats called shouts, for example operated up the Thames between Henley and London and on the river Lea. However, despite a great increase in inland trade in this period, water transport did not expand at the same rate.
It may have been much cheaper but it was also much more unpredictable. Medieval villages consisted mostly of peasant farmers, with the structure comprised of houses, barns, sheds, and animal pens clustered around the center of the village. Beyond this, the village was surrounded by plowed fields and pastures. For peasants, daily medieval life revolved around an agrarian calendar, with the majority of time spent working the land and trying to grow enough food to survive another year.
Church feasts marked sowing and reaping days and occasions when peasant and lord could rest from their labors. Peasants that lived on a manor by the castle were assigned strips of land to plant and harvest. They typically planted rye, oats, peas, and barley, and harvested crops with a scythe, sickle, or reaper. Each peasant family had its own strips of land; however, the peasants worked cooperatively on tasks such as plowing and haying.
They were also expected to build roads, clear forests, and work on other tasks as determined by the lord. The houses of medieval peasants were of poor quality compared to modern houses. The floor was normally earthen, and there was very little ventilation and few sources of light in the form of windows.
In addition to the human inhabitants, a number of livestock animals would also reside in the house. Towards the end of the medieval period, however, conditions generally improved.
Peasant houses became larger in size, and it became more common to have two rooms, and even a second floor. Comfort was not always found even in the rich houses. Heating was always a problem with stone floors, ceilings, and walls.
Not much light came in from small windows, and oil- and fat-based candles often produced a pungent aroma. Furniture consisted of wooden benches, long tables, cupboards, and pantries. Linen, when affordable, could be glued or nailed to benches to provide some comfort. Beds, though made of the softest materials, were often full of bedbugs, lice, and other biting insects.
Peasants usually ate warm porridges made of wheat, oats, and barley. Peasants rarely ate meat, and when they did, it was their own animals that were saved for the winter. Peasants drank wine and ale, never water.
Even though peasant households were significantly smaller than aristocratic ones, the wealthiest peasants would also employ servants.
Service was a natural part of the cycle of life, and it was common for young people to spend some years away from home in the service of another household. This way they would learn the skills needed later in life, and at the same time earn a wage. This was particularly useful for girls, who could put the earnings towards their dowries. Nobles, both the titled nobility and simple knights, exploited the manors and the peasants, although they did not own land outright but were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord through the system of feudalism.
During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs, came to be considered hereditary, and in most areas they were no longer divisible between all the heirs as had been the case in the early medieval period. Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son. The dominance of the nobility was built upon its control of the land, its military service as heavy cavalry, its control of castles, and various immunities from taxes or other impositions.
Nobles were stratified; kings and the highest-ranking nobility controlled large numbers of commoners and large tracts of land, as well as other nobles. Beneath them, lesser nobles had authority over smaller areas of land and fewer people.
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