What did the peasants do for the castles in the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

Many, perhaps most, peasants of the middle ages were serfs. Serfs were not slaves, as they could not be bought or sold or even told what to do, but they were workers who had an obligation to provide part of their crops to their overlord, and they were not permitted to move off their land without permission.

Other peasants were tenant farmers, who owed a portion of their crops as rent.

Typically, they were given small plots of land to grow food for themselves, and they farmed other plots communally with their neighbors.

In times of war, the men could be called to military service. In England and Wales, this meant that the peasants were often required to be armed at all times, war or not, practice Archery, use their bows to protect their fields from vermin, which they could eat, and compete in matches on Sundays. In some other countries, the peasants were not allowed to be armed. The effect of this was that the English tended to win battles with this policy (Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt begin examples) , but had to be careful of how they treated their peasants.

Peasants dressed simply, ate simply, and lived simply. Their houses tended to have wattle and daub wall sections, or be made of field stones with holes filled with daub. They often had thatched roofs. There were no fireplaces and chimneys until late in the period, as these had not been invented. So a fire was built on the dirt floor, and the smoke went out through openings under the peaks of the roofs.

They tended to be very religious. And they tended to be very clean, because they believed the condition of the body was a reflection of the condition of the soul. In the later part of the middle ages, they could see morality plays at the churches.

Music and storytelling were both arts the peasants were exposed to, as itinerant musicians and story tellers worked everything from courts and cities to fairs and crossroads for handouts.

They had the ability, in many places, to decide to leave the life they were raised in to become monks or nuns, but their lives as such would not have been very different, as the monasteries would be likely to use them as agricultural workers of their own, or as cooks or clothes washers.

Some ran away from their overlords. Sometimes a king might want a city built where runaways could find legal refuge. But this was not all that easy to do. And after the Black Death, when peasants were needed by overlords, they were able to get deals from overlords who would illegally tempt them off the land they were bound to in exchange for some concession.

They did not get much money, but they were allowed to sell the fruits of their labors in the fairs.

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