Lesson video

Hello everyone and welcome back to lesson three of four, looking at the enquiry question, How far did the Black Death change the mediaeval world? Now last lesson we met in the village of Walsham and we studied how the people there try to prevent the Black Death from infecting them through the use of three different methods.

We looked at one, how they turned to the church and thought that by praying they'd be able to get God's forgiveness.

Two, that they started to make these sweet airs surround them because they thought it could act as the barrier against the poisonous air that spread the Black Death.

And three, the use of quarantine, the fact that they tried to isolate themselves to stop that disease from spreading even further.

Now of those three only really the third one, the quarantine would have been effective at stopping the spread of the disease.

The other two, not so much.

So what I can imagine you already thinking is that the death toll on Walsham is going to be really quite high as that disease storms through the village.

So this lesson we're going to be looking at the negatives that came of that, as many people lost their lives, but also the positives that came out of it as well.

Very interesting.

Okay, so before we get stuck in, I'd like you to make sure you've got your pen and paper ready.

If not, please just pause me while you run and grab them and then we will get started.

Okay, so to begin this lesson, can you please put the date in the top right hand corner of your piece of paper and the title, which is The Survivors and Land Ownership.

Please make sure both of these are underlined and just pause me here whilst you get that done.

Okay, and for this lesson, we're going to be looking at what happens to Walsham le Willows as the Black Death storms through this village.

Now, in 1348, they had a population of 1,500 villages.

Between April and May of 1349, of those 1,500, 750 to 900 people lost their lives.

And when the Black Death was at its peak, that could have been around 50 people a day losing their lives.

And what this left is only 30 to 50% of villages within Walsham le Willows actually survived the Black Death.

And this would have had a huge effect on how Walsham le Willows operated.

That would have been many, many workers who were unable to tend the farms. So what we need to do in order to work out just how much the Black Death changed the mediaeval world is we need to understand how the mediaeval world operated and to do that we need to go and look at the feudal system.

Here we've got a diagram, that shows us the feudal system.

And what it essentially was, is the hierarchy of every single person in mediaeval England with the Monarch at the top, because they were the most important.

Your Monarch is your king or queen.

Down to the peasants right at the bottom, because they are the least important.

So we can see here how it works.

On the left-hand side, you can see what is given down the ranks of the feudal system.

So from the Monarch to the nobles, the Monarch will give them a lot of land and the nobles would give the knights some of that land and the knights will provide the peasants some protection.

And on the right hand side, we can see what goes up this hierarchy.

So what these different ranks of the feudal system will do in return for that land or that protection.

So you can see that the nobles will give the Monarch advice, they will help the Monarch with ruling the country.

The knights will provide protection for the nobles and the peasants they have the main job of farming all of that land and providing services.

Now within Walsham we don't have all of this feudal system.

Obviously the Monarch did not live in this little village, but this is what it looked like in 1348.

You've got a huge amount peasants and just a few nobles.

We've got a few main ones living in Walsham at this time.

Lady rose, of Walsham Manor, and Lord Edmund of High Hall.

Now some of you might be even thinking to yourself, hang on, we've got a lady that's important.

We've got a woman of importance.

And absolutely right.

You're right to question that because women at this time, their main role was to be in the home, looking after the children, cooking and cleaning.

And it was only because of the Black Death that we started to see women rising up a little bit in importance.

And this is mainly down to all the men in the family losing their life to this disease.

So sure enough Lady Rose, her husband had died because of the Black Death, which meant that she then took up that position of power.

So we've got two nobles, as we said.

And what these nobles did within Walsham is that they would give out some of their land to be rented to the peasants.

And then those peasants, upon taking that land, would then pay taxes to the nobles.

So they'd be giving them money to the nobles.

They'd be swearing loyalty to those nobles.

And they'd also farm the land for them.

And this is really, really important that that farming was done because during that harvest, all the crops would then be used to feed the villages and any extra crops would be used to sell towards other villages.

And that's how profit could be made for the nobles.

And that is how they could keep the correct amount of money for them.

Now, the Black Death had a huge knock-on effect.

As I said to how Walsham was run, how it was organised.

And we can see that here.

In Walsham in 1349, after many people lost their lives, we can see that the amount of peasants massively shrink, and this is going to be a real problem for those nobles because they still have the same amount of land as they had before.

They still have all of that farm land, all of those crops that need to be harvested.

They still got all the same amount of animals and they still need to be taken care of, but now they've got less amount of people to do the job for them.

So that's less peasants to farm the land, less peasants to swear loyalty to the nobles and less peasants to pay taxes to those nobles.

And so Walshams going to run into some problems now.

Okay, so we've come to a pause point now, just so that we have a chance to think more deeply about how the decrease in the amount of peasants is going to affect the nobility.

So the questions we've got here, is what challenges might the nobility face in 1349? To help you out, just think how will their money, power and land change during this time? And remember, this is all because of the amount of workers have now massively decreased.

So just pause here as you bullet point some answers.

Aim for at least three, and then we'll go through the answers together.

Okay, really well done for doing that.

I'm going to go through some points now.

It might be slightly different to yours.

That's absolutely fine.

But if you feel like you'd like to write some of these down, please pause me at any point so that you can do so.

So the first problem for nobility which I'm sure a lot of you would have got is that they have lost their tenants and workers, to the Black Death.

Remember the peasantry was really important for them in getting lots of their money.

And their tenants would have been the peasants that have rented land from them.

And the workers oversee the people that are completing all of their farm work for them, but now they've gone.

So that's problematic.

Therefore another knock on effect for the nobility is their wealth is going to decrease because they can no longer collect as many taxes or as rent as they used to.

But probably the most important problem for the nobility, is that crops and their animals are being left unattended.

With less peasants, we've got less workers to farm all of that land.

And this becomes a real problem for the nobility because they really rely on that land to make their wealth.

And if it's not looked after that means that their wealth is going to decrease even further.

So what they then decide to do is that they decided to increase wages to attract more workers.

Now you remember earlier on, I spoke about two noble people.

We had Sir Edmund and we had Lady Rose.

Now these two nobles competed massively to try and get workers to work on their farm and not the competitor's farm after the Black Death.

And they did this by making sure that they put on the best offer.

They gave the most wages to the villages.

And obviously the nobles didn't want to do this.

They didn't want to give their wealth to the peasants, but they were forced to do so in order to keep their farm still running.

Lots of information there, so we've got another pause point just so we can consolidate that knowledge in our heads.

So what I'd like to do is copy down this question as another heading on your piece of paper.

How did the lives of the nobility change because of the Black Death? Now, what you'll see now is four different bullet points on the right-hand side of the screen.

And what I'd like you to do is copy these down, but put them in the right chronological order.

So what this means is, you can see on the left, you need to put the first event first, all the way down to the second, third and fourth event at the very bottom, okay? I'm going to give you some time to do this now.

So please pause the screen and then we'll go through the correct order together.

Off you go.

Okay, really well done for that.

We're going to go through the correct order now.

So please make sure to give yourself a big tick when you get them correct.

And if you need to make any corrections, then please do so as well.

So I'm sure a lot of you would have got the first event there easily.

Deaths increased as the Black Death stormed through the country.

We know that's what's going to start off with, with the Black Deaths.

Now, what this leads to is the amount of worker decreasing, which meant that a lot of farm work could not be completed.

Remember with all of those deaths, the peasants had massively shrunk in the amount of them.

Thirdly, the farms start to lose value with all of these workers unable to turn out to work and animals escaped and crops were ignored.

So remember, all of that land is ultimately owned by the nobility.

So a lot of you would have got that fourth event.

Nobility panics as the farms lost value.

They decided to raise wages to attract workers.

Remember they want to try and attract workers to their farm and not to their competitor's farm elsewhere.

So that's why these wages would keep rising up.

Really well done for getting that completed.

Remember to give yourself a big tick for all of those that you've got correct.

Okay, really well done for completing that.

We're now going to go through these answers and as always feel free to pause me at any point, if you'd like to add to your answers, if you want to extend them and also please make sure that you give yourself a big tick when you get them correct.

Okay, so question number one; what caused some peasants to become landholders? An acceptable answer; they inherited land.

Remember, we're always after those full sentences and using the words from the question in our answer and even better answer would be; when landholders died from the Black Death, they land would be inherited by another member of their family.

And remember earlier on we spoke about Lady Rose and how it was really quite strange at this time to have a woman who was in such a important position of power.

And the only reason she was able to do that was because she's inherited that land from her husband due to him dying in the Black Death.

Okay, question two; what was the law called that stopped peasants gaining too much wealth? An acceptable answer; ordinance of labourers.

An even better answer in a full sentence; the ordinance of labourers was a law that stopped peasants from gaining too much wealth.

Some of you might of even put in extra detail about how the king kept people's wages so that it wasn't any higher than what wages had been five to six years before the Black Death occurred.

Good, question number three; how did becoming a land holder benefit a peasant? An acceptable answer; they could get money.

An even better answer would explain this in a little bit more detail.

So, what I put is this; if a peasant inherited land, they could farm that land and earn money from the crops and animals being sold.

This was an improvement from working on the nobility's land as the peasants could keep the profits for themselves.

And that way they're going to be able to make a lot more money than they were before and become a bit more wealthier.

Good, question four; why did landless peasants still benefit from surviving the Black Death? An acceptable answer; higher wages and cheaper foods.

Good answer again.

We're going to explain it in a bit more detail here.

Landless peasants still benefited from surviving the Black Death, as the nobility raised wages to keep peasants working on their land.

Plus food was no longer in short supply.

So it's cheaper.

Meaning landless peasants became richer.

And also another benefit for landless peasants, that I didn't include in the text, but it's worth discussing now.

If you were someone who inherited land, quite a lot of peasants were inexperienced at this time.

There's quite a lot of stress having all of this land suddenly to be in charge of.

If you're a landless peasant, you don't have to have any of those worries.

You didn't have any land of your own to look after.

So quite a lot of these people really quite enjoyed many benefits of surviving the Black Death without having any negatives.

Question five; how did the Black Death threatened to disrupt the feudal system? This one's a little bit more tricky.

Let's see how we did.

So an acceptable answer; by peasants rising up and overtaking the more powerful groups.

I mean, it's not wrong, but we can definitely go into more detail here.

So a good answer would have much more detail and more explanation.

Many peasants that survived the Black Death grew wealthier by inheriting land and increased wages.

Wealthier groups in the feudal system, such as nobility, grew concerned that peasants would gain too much money to stay at the bottom of the feudal system and might rise up to overthrow them.

Again, you've got that relationship there between the nobles and the peasants.

It's definitely becoming increasing with tension at this time because the nobility are very very annoyed, the peasants are able to take more of their wealth away from them with the increased wages.

Okay, so now we've come to the near the end of the lesson, we're just going to go back to that enquiry question of how far did the Black Death change the mediaeval world? You'll know that each lesson we come back to this to see if there's been indeed any more changes or if things have largely stayed the same.

So what I would like you to do here is think about how much did life change for the survivors of the Black Death.

The people that we've looked at this lesson.

Think about the nobility, peasant landowners and also the landless peasants.

You've got three different groups there.

All experiences are very different for each of them, but they've definitely experienced some changes themselves.

And think about this as sort of on a continuum.

So you've got this line in front of your here.

We've got on the left-hand side, life did not change at all.

We've got a little bit more in, life mostly stayed the same, life slightly changed and life completely changed, there's nothing that's continued on at all.

So what I'd like you to do is just pause for a moment here and think about how far you think life has changed.

What measuring words would you use? Which one would you go for on this line? Good, well done.

And what I want you to do now is just, with that judgement that you've made, I want you to write a paragraph in your book, explaining why you've made that judgement.

So what you're going to complete is a PEEL paragraph, that stands for point, evidence, explanation, and link.

It's very worthwhile you becoming an expert on this.

I'm still having to teach some of my year 11s how to do this properly.

If you can get this done in year seven, that's very impressive.

So use these sentence starters.

You've got your point.

I think that-- And this is why you choose one of your measuring phrases.

So it might be that you've decided that life mostly stayed the same.

And you just pop that into that gap there.

I think that life mostly stayed the same for survivors of the Black Death.

And then you give some evidence.

This is where you show off all of your historical knowledge that you've learned in this lesson.

This is due to-- Then include some experiences of Walsham villagers.

Be specific if you can.

Drop some names, if you'd like to.

This is where you can talk about the nobility, the peasant landowners, or the landless peasants.

And then your explanation.

Okay so this is how we round off this paragraph.

We bring it back to the question; therefore life did or did not change because-- And then you need to explain how your evidence supports your judgement , okay? Good, so I just want you to pause the slide here as you get that done for me, off you go.

Okay, really, really well done for getting to the end of this lesson.

We are so close to finishing this enquiry question.

You're doing amazingly well.

If you'd like to, then you can share your work with Oak National.

So if you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Really well done for today.

I really look forward to seeing you for lesson four, our last lesson of the enquiry, so we can finally answer that question just how far the Black Death changed the mediaeval world.