Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Mr. Sellin Welcome to this lesson on mediaeval peasants and the sources that we use to discover more about their lives.

For this lesson you're going to need a pen, you're going to need something to write on.

Make sure that your phone is on silent, that there's no distractions, no technological problems getting in the way, just like the peasants would have had back in the day.

Great.

Now the title today is Mediaeval Lives in Domesday Book.

So if you've forgotten how to spell it, go back to the start of the video, try and find it again, watch the video, write the title, come back to this point, and then we're good to go.

Today's lesson is the first of a four lesson inquiry.

An inquiry is one of those big questions that we're going to be working towards.

After four lessons, you'll be able to answer the question on the screen right now, which sources reveal the most about mediaeval peasants? It's a great question, but before we get anywhere close to answering it, we're going to need to know what a peasant is and what a source is.

So I'm going to go away and I'd like you to have a look at this picture.

This picture shows some peasants at work.

All of the people in this picture are peasants.

He's a peasant.

These women are peasants.

This chap's probably a peasant.

This one's doing quite good work here.

They look like they're stiring a big bowl of pasta, but I think they're doing something to do with crops.

You can tell I'm not a farmer.

These are the peasants at work, and it's a source that is showing us this.

A source is, simply, something that exists from the past, which tells us about it.

It's information in this case, the source is a picture, but a source could be a letter, it could be a chronicle, which is the type of story written about the past.

It could even be a ruined building.

It could be some bones in the ground.

Anything which survives from the past, which tells us about the past is a source.

Now what makes this question interesting? The peasants were the majority of England's population during the mediaeval period.

Historians debate exactly what counted as a peasant, but about 85% of the country could count as a peasant and they are interesting because they're quite ordinary.

If you want an idea of what the majority of people are up to, you need to look at the peasants.

Now, this person here is working very hard, as are these people.

This chap here I will admit, does look like standing around in the field doing a bit of birdwatching.

But, they are interesting, they had their own lives.

And if we want to know about them, we need to read and discover about them.

The problem with reading about the peasants is they couldn't read or write, the vast majority of them at least.

And, therefore, they rarely wrote anything about their lives.

We're going to have to look at different sources to find out.

You might be wondering, "What's this Mediaeval period, Mr. Sellin, that you're referring to." Well, the mediaeval period is a contested word, just like peasant.

There's no absolute definition of exactly what it is.

Historians love to argue.

Did it start in 1066 when the Normans invaded England? Did it end in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth? Some say that, some say it's much longer, it's about a thousand years from the year 500-ish to about 1500-ish.

It doesn't really matter, if we take 1066, and I'm going to test myself here.

There? There? 1066-ish.

Quite good.

If we take 1066 as the start of a mediaeval period that we're looking at, and we, and we say that we're going to consider peasants from 1066 until about 1400.

They are a bit like pens, okay? These are both pens, they look slightly different, but we can still call them pens.

Peasants from 1066 to 1400, again, they're a bit different, but they're still peasants.

And we're going to be looking at a contested word.

So let's try and have a working definition of it.

Another really important definition is primary source.

I've talked about a source so far in this lesson, but what is it? Don't get spooked by the word primary.

Primary is just a technical phrase here.

Every time I use the word source, I mean primary source, in these four lessons, at least.

What is it? I'm going to show four options.

Is a primary source of written statement or a book by an historian about the past? Is it, two, something from the past that provide information for historians? Is it, three, ketchup made specifically for young children? Or is it, four, the first book you read about a new topic? You might want to pause, or if you don't need to pause, 'cause you know the answer already, say it now.

Hopefully, you said two, something from the past that can provide information for historians.

Now, if you've not come across this word before, unless you're really confident on it, I will pause the video now and I would write, done it the wrong way, I'd write this word down.

Okay, a primary source is something from the past that can provide information for historians.

I think this King of England is one of the best known Kings of all English history.

William the Conqueror also known as William The First became King in 1066 when he defeated Harold Godwinson, the previous King of England at the Battle of Hastings.

The battle is known for things like the arrow in the eye and the Bayeux Tapestry.

And sometimes it easy to think that's all William did, but he did last 21 years on the throne, year before his death, though.

And of course he didn't know he was going to die.

William ordered something to be made, which was in his mind, the most powerful and important thing he could do.

It was not what you'd necessarily expect.

If you're thinking castle or massive army or huge piece of jewellery, you're wrong.

It was a book.

And actually when it was first made, it wasn't even a book, it was a collection of records.

It's called Domesday Book.

I know the spelling looks like Domesday Book, but it's actually Domesday Book because it's, it's like the day of doom itself, which Christians at the time believed was the day when God would come down from heaven and have the power to decide if people could go to heaven or to hell.

So if it's named after a something that God could do, what on earth, what kind of power does William have? Well, Domesday Book was a record of everything in England in 1086.

It was made by sending hundreds of Royal officials to all parts of the country and asking the same questions of the people that they found that there.

They would call them into a meeting and say, "What was the land like in 1066 when our King William took over? What's the land like now? Who lives here? What's the value of things? And then they would write it all down.

They'd write it in abbreviated, Latin, Latin because it was an incredibly important document and abbreviated 'cause they had a lot to do so they'd run onto the next place.

And they've moved from village to village, hamlet to hamlet, town to town around the entire country, making a record of the value of goods, the value of buildings, the jobs that people had, what position they had in society.

It was enormous.

Domesday Book is an incredibly impressive source.

It's so important, in fact, that you're going to write about it.

Domesday Book, and by the way I say Domesday Book, not The Domesday Book.

Both are kind of correct, both are accepted, but Domesday Book is the more traditional, and I'm weird and traditional, so I say Domesday Book.

Domesday Book, this is the story of it, but jumbled up, the story I've just told you.

In a moment, I'd like you to pause the video and I'd like you to work out the correct order for how Domesday Book was written or compiled.

Pause the video.

Good? You should have now worked out what the correct order for Domesday Book's compilation is this, King William ordered a survey across the whole of England, officers travelled across England and held meetings with the locals.

In each meeting, the same questions were asked and the results are written in Latin and collected in Domesday Book.

It's a good idea to pause the video again now and write down this order.

Fantastic, well done.

It was such an impressive document that the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described, "There was not even one ox nor one cow, nor one pig, which escaped notice in his survey." What this Englishman was saying was that the King was so obsessed with finding out every detail about life in England that even counted the farmyard animals.

Now, why would a King need this level of detail? It's it's not entirely clear.

It might've been about tax.

It might've been about power.

It might've been about changing historical record to make him King.

Nevertheless, what we do know is that over 13,000 individual settlements were recorded and this is incredibly useful for us.

If we want to know about ordinary peasants' lives, Domesday Book is a great place to start, and therefore we're going to look at a particular record.

The only clue I'm going to give you about this place is it's near where I used to live.

It's called Bramley, and I'd like you to read it there.

There, always do it the wrong way round.

Let's read about Bramley.

84 villages, 40 cottages, 18 slaves.

Land for 35 ploughing teams, 20 acres of meadow land, woodland for a hundred pigs, five mills valued at one pound, six shilling, three churches.

The total value of the land in 1066 was 40 pounds.

The total value of the land in 1086 was 60 pounds.

The Lord in 1066 was a man called Alnoth the Noble, and the Lord in 1086 was a man called Bishop Odo of Bayeux.

Now, there are four questions that I'd like you to have a think about.

This is an unusual source, it's in translation.

I've put it in English, which makes it slightly more understandable, but we still need to think quite hard about it.

So four questions, you can either write the question and then the answer or put the answer into a full sentence.

Read them through carefully, and then pause the video and answer them.

Do you think Bramley was a village or a town? What kind of work did the people of Bramley do? What can we learn about their beliefs? And what changed between 1066 and 1086? I pause the video right now.

Great.

You should have unpaused the video by now because you should have got four answers down.

Don't worry if your answer isn't exactly the same wording as I have, as long as you roughly get the same idea, that's okay.

First one.

Do you think Bramley was a village or a town? Bramley was and still is a village.

What kind of work did the people of Bramley do? Well, the vast majority of people in Bramley worked on the land farming and keeping animals.

The clues for that are the ploughing teams. Now ploughs help dig up the ground to help grow crops.

The 100 pigs that were recorded do suggest that the people are keeping animals, and the mills that help make flour for bread.

So the majority of people in Bramley worked on the land farming and keeping animals.

What can we learn about their beliefs? There were three churches, which suggests that people in Bradley were quite religious.

Three churches for 84 villages, 40 cottages and 18 slaves.

That's a lot of churches, when you think about it.

They were probably quite used to the church as being part of their daily lives.

And what changed between 1066 and 1086? Well, firstly, the value of the land increased, that's good news for William at least, but also the Lord who owned Bramley changed.

Alnoth the Noble is an English name, and Bishop Odo of Bayeux is a French name.

And Bishop Odo was a powerful Norman land owner.

He was a very close contact of William's and he was rewarded with lots of land across England.

These villages, which the majority of England were in, they were run as Manors.

You would have a Lord of the Manor, who would be in the largest house and they would own, or at least run the village or the Manor.

The villagers, the peasants, or the cottages, and then the slaves, as well, originally would then work the land for the Lord.

And it's this point that we hit an interesting issue with Domesday Book.

There's no denying, it's a very useful overview, knowing exactly what the value is of various parts of the country.

However, what about the experience of those 20 years for ordinary peasants? We know that the Lord changed in Bramley from Alnoth the Noble to Odo of Bayeux, but did it matter? Domesday Book is an overview, and sometimes that means it can't show the individual experiences of peasants outside of, for example, in Bramley they were farmers, they went to church.

To take another example, there's barely any women mentioned in Domesday Book.

We know that half the country, roughly, would have been women, but unless they were rare landowners or even more rare mentioned because they were desperately poor.

They're not mentioned, we don't know about their jobs, we don't know about their lives, and we know what was in the villages, but what were they made out of? We know how many buildings they were, are they stone, are they brick, are they something else? We know that the peasants in the villages and the cottages, whatever you want to call them are there, but what did they look like? What did they feel? What did they think about? What was important to them? That part of life isn't covered Domesday, and we can't criticise Domesday for it, it was never designed to do that.

But it does mean for our inquiry question of how can we find out about individual mediaeval lives, what sources reveal the most? Well, we're going to have to look somewhere else, but before we do that, we do need to write about Domesday.

I'd like you to pause the video.

I'd like you to read the slides on the next page, and I'd like you to answer the comprehension questions.

Great.

You should now have done the reading, bring some answers to some questions and we'll go through them now.

Again, don't worry if it's not exactly the same, this is what I've got though.

Question one, who ordered Domesday Book to be made? An acceptable answer might be William, and a good answer in a full sentence might look like, King William the First also known as William the Conqueror ordered Domesday Book to be made in 1086.

One trick is to use the words of the question, ordered Domesday Book to be made, ordered Domesday Book to be made.

Suddenly your answer can just look that little bit more sophisticated.

Question two.

What was one reason, one possible reason, why Domesday Book was written? An acceptable answer, to tax the English people.

A good answer, one possible reason for Domesday Book was to give the King a precise value for all the land in England.

This would then help the King collect the correct taxes.

One possible reason for Domesday Book was for William to use it to demonstrate how powerful he was.

That's another one.

Question three.

According to Domesday Book, in what type of settlements did the vast majority of ordinary people in mediaeval England live? An acceptable answer, villages.

Good answer, according to Domesday Book, the vast majority of ordinary people in England lived in villages, which were agricultural and built for farming.

Agricultural is that word, meaning systems of farming, keeping animals, growing crops, working the land.

Question four, describe at least one difficult feature of peasants lives that Domesday contains.

An acceptable answer would be flooding and waste.

But a good answer would say, Domesday Book features lots of meadows, which was land that peasants couldn't farm due to flooding risks.

It also records waste, which was land ruined by violent destruction, often by armies, that could be foreign armies.

It could even be William himself violently fighting back against his own ruled people.

And question five, what can Domesday Book not reveal about peasants lives? An acceptable answer could be, women's lives.

And a good answer would be, very few details about women are recorded in Domesday, so it's difficult to know about their lives.

Furthermore, Domesday is not very helpful for understanding how ordinary people looked, thought or felt.

For some of that, we're going to have to look at different types of sources.

And so in our next lesson, we're going to continue on this inquiry question, which sources reveal the most about mediaeval peasants? And so in that time between now and next time I see you, whether you are, got it right this time, whether you are working in the field, whether you're bird, Nah, that one.

Always getting it wrong.

Whether you're working in the field, whether you're birdwatching like this chap, whatever you're doing, I look forward to seeing you next time.

Bye for now.