Why It Sucks To Be a Medieval Peasant

It's 1315. You've just been born in an English village, into a mud hut you share with a cow. Over the next 67 years you'll survive the Great Famine, pay a fee for literally everything (including your love life), fight at Crécy with a longbow, live through the Black Death, and march on London in the Peasants' Revolt. This is what life was really like for the 9 out of 10 people who weren't knights, kings or princesses. Chapters: 0:00 Pick a random person 1:33 The manor 3:42 Growing up in the mud 5:41 God is watching 7:23 Everything costs extra 8:56 Pottage, bread and ale 10:42 Agnes 12:03 The longbow 14:13 The Black Death 16:29 After the plague 18:25 The Peasants' Revolt 20:58 The end Sources & further reading: Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages; Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound (coroners' rolls); Thomas Walsingham's chronicle (St Albans millstones, 1381); the Statute of Labourers (1351); Mark Ormrod & others on the Peasants' Revolt; Chaucer, The Miller's Tale (General Prologue). #history #middleages #medieval