Everyday Life

Question 1

What might the nobility get up to?

Answer 1

• Hunting expeditions
• Hearing and deciding disputes from the peasantry
• Fighting battles for the King
• Engaging in politics

Question 2

What would the life of a noble woman look like?

Answer 2

• Marrying for wealth and influence.
• She is her husband’s property.
• She would run the estate and household.
• She could only own land if a widow.

Question 3

What was the life like of a noble child?

Answer 3

• Educated (Boys = astronomy, maths, philosophy, battle skills, Latin. Girls = music, manners, conversation, household management, literacy)
• Marriage was arranged and a girl was expected to produce a male heir.

Question 4

What was life like for the poor?

Answer 4

• Farming to fulfil their feudal obligations.
• Farmers and soldiers.
• Women farmed, child reared, cooked, spinning/weaving cloth.
• Some men learned a trade.

Question 5

What was life like for poor children?

Answer 5

• Farming as soon as able.
• Many illiterate
• Would marry early as young teens.
• Might learn father’s trade or get schooling at a monastery.

Question 6

What was a village like?

Answer 6

• Small clusters of houses around the village green.
• Near a stream or river for water, waste disposal, and washing.
• Controlled by a manor house and lord.
• The ‘common’ was shared as grazing land.
• Had a church, lord’s hunting forest, meadows for growing hay, castle/manor house.

Question 7

What were peasants houses like?

Answer 7

• 1/2 roomed wood huts
• Clay walls, unglazed windows, dirt floors, thatched roofs.
• Animals inside in winter
• Vegetable garden
• No toilets, washing facilities or beds.

Question 8

What were houses of nobility like?

Answer 8

• Stone houses/castles
• 2+ storeys
• Tiled floors, elaborate furniture, tapestries for warmth/decoration.
• Small room on outside wall for toilet.

Question 9

What were the most important trades on a manor?

Answer 9

Millers, Smiths, Shoemakers, Carpenters, Coopers, Weavers, Tanners, Bakers, Painters

Question 10

What happened on Sundays?

Answer 10

• Day off for peasants.
• Go to mass at church
• Have a village meal with singing, dancing, entertainment.

Question 11

What was the Three-Field System?

Answer 11

• It is a form of crop rotation.
• Villagers decide how to use the 3 main fields.
• 1 was left fallow (no crops) to recover fertility. Animals would provide natural fertiliser
• Other 2 fields divided up in 10m wide strips.
• A field was planted with one set of crops one year, different crops in the second year, and left fallow in the third.

Question 12

What were examples of a lord’s power?

Answer 12

• Peasants had to ask lord’s permission to marry, leave the village, sell animals, educate their children.
• Peasants paid tax to use the lord’s mill, oven, brewery, birth of sons, marriages of daughters, death of family member.

Question 13

What were the 3 different groups on the farms?

Answer 13

1. Freemen - bought their freedom and paid rent for the land they used.
2. Serfs - the lord ‘owned’ them.
3. Labourers - no land. Worked for others, mending tools, rented out farm animals.