A medieval harvest field: two women bending forward reap with sickles. On the left is a bound sheaf while a man with a sickle in his belt prepares another for binding.
Life in Thirteenth-Century England
The feudal system governed society during the reigns of King John and his immediate predecessors. The moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church supported this strict social order. The monarch was at the top of secular English society, above the barons who led lesser knights in battle and governed the peasants who worked on their lands. The church possessed its own social hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, parish priests, monks, and nuns, defending its independence from secular control by appealing disputes to the pope. Wealthy merchants and burgesses (townspeople) enjoyed a limited degree of self-government in the towns, as guaranteed by royal charters. There were two classes of peasants: the small percentage of “free” peasants, whose only authority was the king, and the villeins, or serfs, who were accountable to their social superiors, who owned the land that the serfs worked. At the time, English law defined freedom as “the natural power of every man to do as he pleases, unless forbidden by law or force”1 and this freedom was elusive for serfs. Each manor had its own court for hearing disputes among the peasantry, operating as a microcosm of the state. From the reign of Henry II the landed nobility were also expected to attend royal courts as the state assumed more control over the justice system. Knights served as jurors on county courts. This social structure resulted in the entire nobility possessing a working knowledge of common law and customs, which would inform the creation of Magna Carta in 1215.
The ruling Plantagenet dynasty, named for the broom plant (planta genesta) that was the emblem of Henry II’s father, had a greater knowledge of the world outside England than the vast majority of their subjects. Henry II and his sons, Richard I and John, were not only kings of England, they presided over a vast empire that included all of England as well as the northern and western regions of what is now France: Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine. The monarchs moved throughout their empire to dispense justice, command the military, and exert their authority in person. The mobility of the royal court was also dictated by practical considerations. The extensive royal household would exhaust the available food supply surrounding one castle and have to move on to the next residence. The court spoke Norman French, with Latin serving as a common language for Europe’s clergymen, diplomats, lawgivers, and scholars.
The reigns of Henry II, Richard I, and John saw the formal division of the landed nobility into two distinct classes: there were the barons, some of whom held titles, who served the king directly, owned substantial tracts of land, and acted as military leaders; immediately below the barons were knights, who had the resources to equip themselves and participate in military campaigns or pay “shield money” in lieu of active service.2 Over the course of the twelfth century, there were between seven and thirty “titled barons” — the earls who ranked directly below the king and his sons. The titled barons were the wealthiest of the hundred baronial families. These magnates controlled vast lands with twenty or thirty manors worked by serfs, enjoyed incomes of hundreds of pounds per year, lived in castles, and followed the trends in architecture, cuisine, and fashion set by the royal court.
By the thirteenth century, titled barons demonstrated their wealth and prestige by commissioning stone castles in place of separate timber buildings surrounded by stone walls, which was the predominant style of castle from 1066 until the thirteenth century. The barons enjoyed a diet rich in meats, including beef, mutton, pork, and poultry; Fridays and many Wednesdays were designated fast days on the church calendar when fish, such as sole, herring, or eels might be served. These fast days derived from Old Testament precedents and were intended to demonstrate piety and self-discipline. Raw produce was considered unhealthy, and fruits and vegetables were therefore confined to preserves and stews. The Angevin domains, the enormous collection of territories in western France controlled by the Plantagenet kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, included the lucrative wine-producing regions of the Bordeaux and the Loire valleys; young wines stored in wooden casks were the favourite drinks of the aristocracy. John’s wine cellar contained 180,000 gallons in 1201, though Philip II of France mocked John’s inability to distinguish the best wines from inferior vintages.
One of England’s first etiquette manuals was written around 1200. Titled Urbanus Magnus (The Book of the Civilized Man), it is filled with advice for those invited to a banquet in a lord of the manor’s great hall during John’s reign. The book contains many rules that are still recognized today, including instructions to keep elbows off the table and mouths closed while chewing food. The author, Daniel of Beccles, also provides advice that reflected his times, including instructions to look up at the ceiling while belching and to turn around to spit to avoid offending fellow diners. Men and women from baronial families wore floor-length garments to demonstrate that they did not do manual labour, and Henry II’s choice to wear a shorter cloak earned him the nickname curtmantle, meaning “short robe.”
The ruins of Wolvesey Castle in Winchester. The castle was the residence of the powerful bishops of Winchester during the twelfth century.
The medieval gatehouse in the town of Canterbury in Kent, England. Aside from London, most thirteenth-century English towns were small with only a few thousand inhabitants.
As England’s ruling class, the barons fiercely protected their traditional prerogatives, including the right to advise the king at council, govern their lands and peasants without interference, marry exclusively within their own class, and receive justice from their peers. While barons acted as administrators for the entire kingdom, lesser knights participated in the legislative process at a local level, bringing the records of county courts to the king’s court. A recent study placed the number of knights at 3,453 during John’s reign.3 This number dropped over the course of the thirteenth century as inflation and advances in armour and weapons technology increased the cost of knighthood. By 1258, the cost of equipping a knight for battle might be a year’s income from a modest estate; therefore, many poorer families dropped out of the knightly class. In contrast to the wealthy barons, a knight might possess a single fortified manor whose lands and peasant labour produced an income of ten pounds per year. Knighthoods provided a living for the younger sons of the baronial families. Inheritance in thirteenth-century England was governed by the rules of primogeniture, which passed estates intact to the eldest son. Daughters received their share of their family’s wealth through their dowries while younger sons were equipped as knights or joined the clergy. Landless knights could attach themselves to a baronial household and provide military service. Despite the subordinate position of knights within the English ruling class, they were recognized as leaders of their communities. Knights served on juries, acted as county sheriffs, heard the appointments of attorneys, and brought local complaints to the king’s court.
In contrast to the itinerant royal household, and those barons and knights who participated in continental military campaigns and crusades, the majority of John’s subjects lived out their lives close to their birthplaces, rarely travelling beyond the nearest market town. As much as 90