Nobility and Peasantry

The bond between nobility and peasants was predominantly through economic stability. The nobility, whose business it was to fight and rule over peasants, depended on the rents paid to them from their peasants in order to sustain their way of life. In return the peasants depended upon the nobility for social order and justice as well as their homes, farmland and, depending on the size of the estate, tools. Although the nobility had substantial control over the lives of their peasants, in almost every regard, the nobility were more dependent on peasants for maintaining their lifestyle than peasants were to the nobility who had, through generations, acquired the skills to maintain their own.

In a primitive agrarian and feudalist society, such as that of the Middle Ages, virtually all wealth consisted of land and the immediate produce of the land. Power was placed with the nobles who could command and exploit those resources for profit. However, society was largely dependent on its lowest class, that of peasant farmers. Peasants were the ground support of the feudal social structure of medieval Europe. There were different types of peasants that made up their class and who served slightly different roles within it. Slaves, who could be bought and sold, were a very small part of the peasantry as their numbers declined after the early middle ages. Freemen, also a small portion of society, owned small pieces of land and could move about freely. Serfs made up the majority of peasants, they were “bound to the soil”; they were the labor that went with it and could neither leave the manor nor be forced to go. Almost all peasants lived on feudal manors where a noble lord owned the land and lent out portions of it to be farmed for a fee.

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...ted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History. New York: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965, p. 28.

Frederic Austin Ogg, ed., A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance. New York: 1907, reprinted by Cooper Square Publishers, New York: 1972, pp. 127-129.

Gustave Fagniez, ed., Documents Relatifs à l'Histoire de l'Industrie et du Commerce en France. Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1898, Vol. I, pp. 107-108; reprinted in Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, eds., A Source Book for Medieval Economic History. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965, pp. 235-236.

Charles Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906, pp. 200-203, 205