Lesson video

Hello, it's time for another lesson on mediaeval peasants and the sources that we use to discover more about their lives.

As always, I'm Mister Sellin and you're going to need a pen and something to write on, make sure the phone's on silent, so it doesn't distract you and make sure you've got the title down correctly, it's, 'Mediaeval Lives in Material Culture', and you might need to go back to the start of the video to check the spelling.

Once you've got that ready, let's get started.

We're starting as usual with this enquiry question again, which sources reveal the most about mediaeval peasants? It's certainly a question that we're getting closer towards answering, although it's also a question which is looking trickier as we go, because we're realising that there's not necessarily a perfect source.

We've learned lots about these peasants already.

You know this picture quite well by now, there's this bird watcher and these people who are, I still don't know what they're doing.

And sometimes in history, there's just questions that we'll never be able to get the answer for.

But what we do know, is more about their lives.

We know that these peasants all around me right here make up about 85% of England.

We know from "Domesday Book" that they were spread out quite evenly across the country.

We also know from the "Luttrell Psalter" that they had varied and interesting lives.

It wasn't just all work all day and therefore they're interesting people, and that's why they're interesting to study.

Here's a reminder of these two sources, "Domesday Book" on the left and the "Luttrell Psalter" on the right.

Now "Domesday" and the "Luttrell Psalter" are both purposefully written.

They were commissioned, they were paid for by a powerful owner at the time, and they were designed not to provide historians with a record hundreds of years later, but at least to create some sort of reasonable record of England at the time This is why it's so useful.

Partly because the "Domesday," you get an overview and because for the "Luttrell Psalter," you get an insight into ordinary lives through those wonderful illustrations.

But today, we're going to look at another source and I think it's perhaps even more beautiful, in a way, than these two.

I'd like you to imagine what it might be.

What could be more beautiful than this? And more impressive than this? What do you think? It's a brick.

Well, okay, no, it's not a brick.

This is actually a tiny little fragment of pottery.

It's fascinating stuff.

Okay, it's not beautiful anymore, perhaps.

Well, you might think it is actually just because of the story that's within this broken fragment of pottery.

But, I think it's beautiful because of what it represents.

We can't literally reconstruct these past communities.

We wouldn't take all these pieces that we find and rebuild an entire kingdom.

But we can imagine a rebuilt kingdom or a village, or anywhere from the past, by what it's left behind.

You might not be able to tell immediately, but this is actually the same piece of pottery.

Three times, three different angles.

It's just one fragment of an old pot.

How on earth do we know it's an old pot? Well I, I can't actually tell you.

I'm not an expert in archaeology and reconstructing how little fragments originally looked as part of its proper object.

But experts who spend many years being able to put these things back together in their mind at least, will be able to tell us tiny little things mean big conclusions about the past.

For example, these tiny little specks of green here, and here suggests that this was once covered in a green enamel glaze.

That's that sort of shiny green coating that you sometimes get around a pot suggesting that the original owner was perhaps that slightly bit richer than somebody that would have an unglazed pot.

I think that's quite interesting.

And, you may have seen this sort of thing happen before.

You might even be thinking of archaeology, which is where we dig up these objects from the ground, because they've been left behind.

They've been ignored.

They've been forgotten about.

Material Culture, the topic of our lesson today, is not exactly the same as archaeology.

We're not going to look at everything dug up from the ground.

Some things that we'll be studying were never dug up.

This is the ruin of an old church, 'Whitby Abbey', and it wasn't dug up.

It's been ruined.

It's been left like this, but it's not an archaeological site.

Material Culture is not just from the ground, but it is all the objects and the buildings that a past community would have used.

Historians of material culture are interested in objects and in buildings because it offers that insight into how a peasant saw their world, how they interacted with their world and what they valued in their world.

In this lesson, we're going to be studying the material culture of the mediaeval world that's sometimes an archaeological find.

So, some of the things we'll look at today will have been dug up from the ground, but other things will have been above ground and just forgotten about, or maybe even treasured and known about for hundreds of years.

Together, they make up the objects and the physical world, the mediaeval peasants lived in.

So it's a brilliant way of learning more about their lives.

But, before we do that, time for a simple reminder of some basic knowledge that we need to know before we move on.

This one should be quite straightforward.

What percentage of England's population were peasants? Was it either 25%, 35%, 55% or 85%? You can either write down the answer or you can just tell it to the screen.

What do you think? The answer is of course, 85%.

Which statement best describes where people lived in England? Possible answers are; 'searching through records for written descriptions of daily lives', is material culture 'visiting an historical site and comparing it to a modern map', is material culture, 'examining the objects and buildings of past communities?' Or is material culture, 'building your own reconstruction of past buildings using authentic materials'? The answer as I'm sure you've all got, is number three, 'examining the objects and buildings of past communities'.

And as always, I'd really suggest pausing the video now and writing down this definition of material culture in your book.

It's time to look at one specific example of material culture through an archaeological site.

And to do that, I'm going to tell you a bit of a story.

It's a story about a village called Wharram Percy, and this is a photograph of it right here.

Wharram Percy is what we call a deserted mediaeval village.

It's not been lived in for hundreds of years.

Part of the reason for that is because most of it doesn't exist anymore.

You can see from this photo that the church is the only building that still survives.

There were peasant houses in Wharram Percy, but they've since been lost underground because hundreds of years ago in about the 16th century, the last villages moved out of Wharram Percy.

We don't entirely know why, it's not a hugely important village.

So, nobody really recorded what happened, but there are a few suspicions.

It might have been that there were high rents being charged to the villagers.

It might've been that they were moving to find work elsewhere.

Nevertheless, they moved out and therefore what's remaining in Wharram Percy, is almost what Wharram Percy was hundreds of years ago.

And so, by taking away the layers of dirt and bringing back to the surface, what was originally there, we almost get a time capsule of Wharram Percy and we look into the world of the mediaeval peasants that lived there.

Archaeologists have been able to carry out an excavation, which is a large and organised dig.

And the largest of which took part in 2002.

The number of finds was enormous.

They found so many relics, so many examples of things from the mediaeval world, that it took two years before the results were published and they are still being worked on and researched today.

More and more things are being discovered and argued about what was found in Wharram Percy.

The excavation itself has demonstrated that Wharram Percy was a standard agricultural village.

This is the foundation of a long house and a barn stood in the fields of Wharram Percy And, obviously, although we can't see anything, I like to think back to the "Luttrell Psalter" that we looked at last lesson.

Imagine the peasants that we saw, dotted around the marginalia of that book.

And now, imagine them walking around this field.

We're going to have a go at looking at some of these archaeological finds and seeing what claims we can make about what they are and what they represent.

When I say a claim, that's almost like a statement.

It's a suggestion.

It's not a complete guess.

We're not just picking random things out of our head, but we're giving an educated guess about what these things can reveal about the past.

So, for this, you're going to need, I would say about a side of A4 at least.

Again, it depends on how big your handwriting is.

We're going to draw a grid.

And my top tip is to make sure you don't draw the complete grid first.

Now, this is incredibly tricky for me because I'm trying to do this on camera.

So, don't draw the whole grid and then go, 'Oh no, I don't have enough space', disaster.

Just draw the lines for the columns and then draw, you know, the line across and then make sure that you can just go on to the next page if need be.

I'm probably making it more confusing than I am.

Okay.

Here's the grid.

You're going to need to make sure that this column on the, on the left hand side, 'findings' is shorter.

That can be a small column.

And then the other two, 'what might these suggest about peasants' lives'? and 'what have experts claimed about it'? They can be larger.

Okay.

That was perhaps the most complicated explanation of a grid I've ever given.

And I'm sure you're intelligent enough to work out, draw the grid, pause if need be and come back when you're ready.

Now, if you're listening to this part, you should have this table ready.

Just like it is right here.

If not make sure it's done, super.

For the first part of this activity, we're actually only going to use this column and this column, this will be left for later.

In the left, we're going to record different findings, different things that have come from Wharram Percy.

And in this middle column, we're going to have a think and we're going to suggest what they revealed about peasants lives.

And this is where you need to do a bit of thinking for your own.

Like I say, it's not complete guessing, but it's working out what they might be able to tell us.

We'll do an example together.

Here's the first finding.

The first finding is fragments of pottery.

So, in the left hand column, I'm going to be writing fragments of pottery.

And then, it says there were lots of broken fragments of pottery discovered at Wharram Percy.

The fragments in smaller peasant houses were from a local kiln and fragments in larger peasant houses were from farther a field.

This is an example of what they might look like.

So I've got to think, hang on.

What might this tell us about peasants' lives? Okay.

So, fragments of pottery, it's all broken up.

Well, I doubt the peasants had it all broken up.

It was probably something that they used and it's just been broken since.

So what might it have been? It could have been a pot.

It could have been a vase, it could have been a jug somehow carrying water, carrying food, not entirely sure, but that they had items that were used to help with cooking or with the transfer of water, okay that's useful.

But this here, the fragments in smaller peasant houses for, from a local kiln, okay? A kiln is where a pottery is made.

And fragments in larger peasant houses were from further afield.

Now why would a small peasant house be buying local pottery? And then those in a larger peasant house have pottery that had come from all around other parts of the country.

Okay, so I'm thinking a smaller peasant house is probably a house belonging to a poorer peasant.

Ah, okay? And if they're poorer, they can probably only afford the local pottery.

But if they're richer, they've gone further afield.

Okay? Okay.

So maybe we would write that they are able to travel around and buy from different places.

Yes, here we go, fragments of pottery.

And then I might write something like, poorer peasants owned more local pottery, and richer peasants might be able to travel around and buy from different places.

Fantastic.

We'll find out later how accurate that actually is and what our expert has argued.

But for now we're going to go through different examples.

I'm going to read them aloud and it's your job to write down what the finding is and what you think it suggests about peasants' lives.

Don't worry if you don't think you know the perfectly right answer.

Okay? I'll let you into a little secret.

There's a mistake that I've put in here.

Okay? Just to prove that we're all human, we can all make mistakes.

It's about giving it to go.

The first example, is a child's leather shoe.

A single child's shoe, made of goat skin, had been preserved in water after ending up in a pond.

There are four separate patches on the shoe, made with a cheaper leather.

They appear to have been attached at different times.

I can't actually show you the shoe itself and a photo it doesn't exist, but the pond does.

So this is the pond that they pulled the shoe out of.

And what I'd like you to do is pause the video and have a think.

What might the shoe tell us about the lives of peasants and focus specifically on the patches.

Why would a shoe have patches on it? What does that tell us about peasants? Pause now, write your ideas down.

Great.

The next one, Inside different buildings.

There are often small clusters of buildings.

The houses often contain remnants of burnt charcoal.

That's the sort of thing you'd use to have a fire.

Smaller buildings next door do not have burned charcoal, but animal droppings instead, animal droppings is poo.

The stuff that the animals leave behind.

So again, have a think, focus on why these houses would have burned charcoal.

Let's move on.

Pottery shards in the field.

Unusually, shards of pottery were discovered in two places outside the homes.

Lots of shards were found in piles near buildings, surrounded with dung, bones and other household rubbish.

Tiny fragments of the same pottery were found scattered across the fields.

And this is a bit of a guessing game that material culture historians and archaeologists have to work out, why would there be little, tiny, little shards, little broken bits of pottery in a pile of dung, and then also scattered across the fields? What does that tell us about how the peasants lived and worked? Have a think, pause the video, write your thoughts down in the table.

Having written so far, let's move on to the next one.

Animal bones.

Now, technically animal bones.

Isn't really material culture, because it's not an object or a building that's been made or preserved.

It's just bones.

But if you don't tell anyone, I won't tell anyone.

Let's just do animal bones anyway.

Different types of animal bones were found in Wharram Percy.

There is lots of evidence of chickens, cows and sheep.

Here are some modern cows in Wharram Percy.

There are very few deer or pheasant bones, which were far more common in lords' houses.

Okay.

Again, pause the video.

Have a think.

Why would there be certain types of animal bones discovered near the peasants' houses? Why would there not be other types of animal bones, which were more common near lords' houses? What are deer and pheasant used for? I wonder if you can work it out.

What does that tell us about peasants and lords? We've got two more findings to have a look at.

Rubbish heaps.

In the outdoor rubbish heaps, lots of animal bones were discovered.

When examined closely, lots of the bones had gnaw-marks.

That's when a dog has bitten them, almost certainly from the village dogs.

Some pottery fragments also showed the same marks.

Okay? So, the animal bones have been bitten.

What on earth can that tell us about how the peasants lived their lives? I'll give you a bit of a clue.

This tells us something about how the village was set up.

What can we tell about the rubbish heap, given that the dogs were able to bite on the bones and the pottery? How did the peasants deal with rubbish and waste? Once you've paused the video and written down your thoughts, let's move on.

Metal objects.

While rarer than pottery, some metal objects were found in Wharram Percy.

One building had a large number of horseshoes and horse bones.

Some larger houses had locks, and a small number of decorated metal items, such as cups and candlesticks.

So we've got a few things to wonder here.

I'd like you to have a think about what this type of building might be and given this type of building, what does that mean about the work in the village? And then this one here about larger houses with metal locks and small numbers of decorated metal items. What does that tell us about the peasants' possessions? Remember, larger houses I think is to do with richer peasants.

So what did richer peasants have? Why would they have locks? Why would they have metal decorated items? What does that tell us about them and how they saw themselves and what they wanted in the world? This is complicated stuff you're doing really well.

Pause the video if you haven't already, write down your thoughts and then we'll move on.

So by now you should have your findings in your left hand column, which is just the list of things.

And then this middle column is your thoughts about what they reveal about mediaeval lives.

If you've not got to this point yet, and you've just been listening to me, pause the video, rewind, go through pausing at each finding, and writing down your thoughts.

It's important that we get this done.

We're now going to have a think about this right hand column.

What have experts claimed about it? In a way this isn't the absolute right answer.

When I say experts, it's actually only one expert.

It's a man called Christopher Dyer, and he is an absolute expert.

He's studied the ordinary lives of mediaeval peasants for decades and he's written books and articles on it, but he can't absolutely know for sure.

And so, don't think of this necessarily as right or wrong.

You'll see that I make a mistake in a moment, but it's interesting at least to compare to what Christopher Dyer claims. The first findings that we looked at were these fragments of pottery and the smaller peasant houses have fragments from a local kiln and the larger peasant houses, which I thought were the richer houses, had them from further afield, from wider places in the country.

I had this idea that the peasants who were richer were maybe travelling around on pottery buying holidays of some sort, buying from further afield to show off how rich they were.

Let's see what Dyer claimed.

Dyer concluded that there was a divide between rich and poor.

Great.

I've got that.

Poorer peasants owned local pottery.

Yes.

And richer peasants could afford to buy from elsewhere.

Yeah, okay.

I see where I might have got slightly carried away here.

I thought that the richer peasants were travelling around buying all this stuff, but it's much more likely that the market traders came to them.

They couldn't just leave their work and go on a pottery buying expedition.

This is what Dyer has concluded and he is an expert.

I really think he has a very strong case here, but remember, we don't know absolutely, for sure.

It's not about checking if you've got it right or wrong, it's more about having a go yourself and having a go at then summarising Dyer's conclusion.

So, you can write it word for word in the right hand column here, but I'd recommend not just copying it word for word.

I'd summarise it in a few words in a sentence or two, maybe.

What does Dyer claim about this finding? If you haven't paused already to do that, then go ahead and do that now.

And then we'll move on to the child's leather shoe found the pond.

Dyer's conclusion was that leather was expensive and a peasant family would consider it precious.

Repairing worn out items was the only option as replacing was too expensive.

I wonder if you've got this too.

The patches on the child's leather shoe, because it's been constantly repaired, perhaps even four times, this suggests that leather was affordable for peasant families, but it was still quite expensive for them.

They probably only had one set of shoes each and they had to keep repairing it if they wanted to keep using it.

I think that's quite interesting.

It suggests that peasants were able to buy things, but not too much.

Again, pause, summarise.

Let's move on.

The different buildings.

Dyers concluded, peasants might own or have control over more than one building.

They would live in the home and have barns and stables nearby for keeping animals.

That's why that there's this charcoal in one of the houses, that's where the peasants would live and have their fire, but the other buildings nearby, that's for the animals, their barns, their stables.

Peasants actually had quite a lot of land to look after.

They're not in absolutely tiny cramped bits of land.

They're quite spread out.

They've got control of land and buildings.

They probably had more land per person than lots of people do nowadays.

Again, interesting conclusion there.

Pottery shards in the field.

Dyer has said, that rubbish heaps contained lots of dung, which would be left to form manure.

That's all the animal poo.

This was then scattered with shards included to help the crops grow.

So this is the, his answer to the mystery.

Why were all this pottery discovered across the field? It's because the rubbish heap was left all the animal poo, it was gathering together and it was left to form manure, which is that fertiliser which helps crops grow.

When it was then scattered across, the tiny bits of pottery that ended up in it, ended up in the fields.

So what we've got here is not one manure pile, but probably one big rubbish pile that everything gets chucked in together.

Interesting.

I wonder if you worked one out.

Animal bones.

Peasants kept animals for farming purposes, not for leisure.

Deer and pheasants were kept for hunting, and this was a sport for lords rather than peasants.

I wonder if you worked this one out, the deer and the pheasant, they're sometimes known as game because of the quality of the meat and the fact that the animals are normally hunted as sport.

The peasants would have been used to working with animals and in many cases, killing animals for food, but it was for practical reasons.

It was to provide food, not for sport, not for fun.

The peasants had other forms of fun, but hunting deer and pheasants was not for them.

And therefore, Dyer has concluded that there is a difference between the sport of peasants and the sports of lords.

Again, summarise that in your table.

Rubbish heaps.

Marks on the pottery suggest bones were not already chewed before disposal.

The rubbish heap would have been left open for weeks on end.

You can imagine the smell.

I'll explain this one.

It's not the most easy to understand.

When you see an animal bone that's been chewed, that's been gnawed, you imagine that's because the dog has been given a bone.

But the pottery has also been gnawed, which suggests that it was being gnawed when it was in the rubbish heap.

This means that the rubbish heap must be accessible by the dogs.

And this means that the rubbish heap must be near the centre of the village and open for weeks, if not months on end, slowly gathering up dung, and as we know pottery.

You can just imagine the smell can't you? Yes, they didn't throw away rubbish in their houses.

They throw it away in a big dump.

Goodness me, it would have smelled.

Metal objects.

Metal was a more expensive object.

The number of horseshoes suggests that peasants found horses very useful.

Peasants also enjoyed showing off what wealth they had.

I wonder if you worked out that locks and decorated metal items mean the peasants found value in their items. They wanted to show off their expensive items. And they were worried that they, if they left their doors open, they could be nicked.

Metal was rare, but it was something that the peasants could buy, both to work with and to show off.

Well done.

You've worked hard to come up with some conclusions about these ordinary objects and the people that held them and owned them once.

But remember, archaeology is not the only part of material culture.

Material culture is interested in objects and buildings that might've survived ever since, and perhaps being used and lived in ever since.

One example of a building that's been used ever since in the same way, is a church.

This is Chaldon Church in a village in Surrey.

It's mentioned in "Domesday" book and it's a church which looks quite normal from the outside.

I mean, you can imagine, can't you? People getting married in it.

You can imagine people going for Sunday services there.

It's an ordinary church.

And from the outside, you might think it just looks like any other church and you'd be right.

It does look like any other church.

The inside of this church, however, has still got a mediaeval painting.

And this painting was quite normal for the time, but quite rare nowadays.

It's called a Doom painting because it's quite a vivid and almost scary portrayal of heaven and hell.

This is an enormous painting that covers an entire wall inside the church.

At the top here, you can see heaven with the angels and you can see the ladder going down into hell, with all sorts of horrible things happening to the people down in hell.

Now, remember everyone pretty much in England, in the mediaeval period was a Christian, and they strongly believed in heaven and hell.

And you'd go to one of those after you'd died.

And therefore, following the churches teaching, being able to avoid the horrible things happening in hell and being able to enjoy the good things with the angels up in heaven, was something that every Christian wanted to do.

So why would the church spread its messages through a Doom painting? Why did they not just write a book and give that to the peasants? Well, the peasants couldn't read.

There's no point writing down how to get into heaven, because the peasants wouldn't be able to understand it.

If you put it in a painting that's vivid and potentially quite terrifying to a peasant and make sure that they see it because it's up on a large wall that they will pass every week, then surely they're going to listen to you.

The church was desperate to teach its message to mediaeval peasants.

And mediaeval peasants were very used to a lot of church influence in their lives.

We can see that mediaeval peasants responded to Doom paintings because they also owned a lot of these.

These are called 'Pilgrim Badges'.

These are much smaller, they're tiny little badges, you could hold several of these in your hand.

And they're small metal objects that are little souvenirs.

Now we said earlier that peasants didn't travel around buying pots, but they did occasionally travel to go on pilgrimage.

This is where a peasant would visit a Holy site.

Somewhere else in the country.

Canterbury was a common place to visit.

They'd buy a little souvenir to demonstrate they've been to a Holy site to demonstrate that they were good Christians and they would keep these at home.

The fact that so many of these pilgrim badges exist demonstrates how common the fear of hell was amongst the mediaeval peasants and how much they were influenced by the church, its teachings and a desperate desire to show that they were good Christians.

Now this is important.

Material culture can demonstrate religious beliefs amongst the peasants.

I'd like you in a moment to pause this video and write as a subheading 'Investigating religious beliefs'.

And we're just going to do a bit of short writing.

There's four sentence starters.

I'd like you to finish them off.

Doom paintings, like the one at Chaldon church, were made because.

They reveal that mediaeval peasants were.

Pilgrim badges were made because.

They reveal that mediaeval peasants.

You can say either were, or finish that sentence elsewhere.

You might want to go back, watch the Doom painting pilgrim badge.

But again, but you should end up writing about a short paragraph about material culture, helping us with religious beliefs.

Once you've done that, let's move on.

We're nearly at the end of our video now.

And there are a few issues, a few problems with material culture that is important to mention.

Firstly, mistakes can be made.

There is a brilliant example, of a German archaeologist who made a bit of an embarrassing mistake.

They, they dug into the ground and they found this incredible iron band.

It was almost, it was fully circular or nearly fully circular.

And it had this sort of arc over the top and it had spikes going around and they thought, wow, this is incredible.

This is a crown of some mediaeval king.

And they put it in the museum and said, Oh look, we've, we've got a mediaeval king in our town.

How very exciting that you can see his crown, it's the round bit with the spiky bits and a bit over the top, it's impressive.

And after getting on the museum display, an expert came along and said, um, no, this isn't a crown.

This is the metal rim of an object that's far more common.

You see the wood has rotted away, but this is the metal band that goes around the outside of a bucket.

And the handle on top is used for carrying.

Oh dear.

The other issue with material culture is that it can be difficult to explain why something happened.

Yes, we may have a part of a jug.

We may have even parts of churches that still exist, but it can be difficult to explain exactly why they happened.

Why was this fract thing found here? Why was this thing worn in this particular way? Unfortunately, there's no explanation.

There's no instruction manual that comes with these finds.

They're just pulled out of the ground.

It can be difficult.

And the last issue with material culture, is that there's no guarantee that your local find is the same across the whole country.

What I mean by this, is if you want to know what's happening across the entire of England, it requires far more work than for example, reading "Domesday".

"Domesday", just by flicking through it can tell you what's happening in England.

Although having to dig up or at least visit all these different places across England, to look at the material culture requires a lot more work.

You're very nearly at the end of this lesson you've done really well.

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

You've already done lots of thinking and writing.

So they should be really quite answerable by now.

Once you're ready, pause, and I'll see you soon.

Now that you're back, let's go through some answers.

Question one.

Why do historians of material culture often need to use archaeological methods to investigate mediaeval lives? The acceptable answer would be mediaeval objects are often buried.

And a good answer, with just that little bit more detail might be something like, historians of mediaeval culture often need to use archaeological methods because the objects left behind by ordinary peasants were not important enough to preserve.

They were lost in the ground.

Question two, why is it impossible that decorative and functional objects were found at Wharram Percy? Acceptable answer would be, it tells us more about peasants And a good answer would say something like, functional items reveal that the peasants worked hard, decorative decorative items, reveal how peasants lived their life outside of work.

Many peasants were keen to demonstrate their wealth or at least what little they had of it.

Question three, what can Doom paintings and pilgrim badges reveal about religious belief among mediaeval peasants? Acceptable answer, they were very religious.

A good answer, Doom paintings and pilgrim badges reveal that peasants lives were very religious.

They were frequently taught religious messages from the church and would often collect pilgrim badges to demonstrate that they were loyal Christians.

Question four, what difficulties can be found when investigating material culture? A good answer will say something like, material culture can be difficult to research when there are not many surviving sources.

This is particularly true for peasants' objects, which might not be deemed important enough to preserve.

Also, even though an object might be held and examined, it could be difficult to know why it was made.

And, so here we are at the end of our lesson as always, we come back to the same enquiry question, which sources reveal the most about mediaeval peasants? You're nearly ready to answer this question, and all that remains for next lesson, is for me to tell you about one remaining source.

And within that source, there's a brilliant story about the best rule-breaking peasant you'll ever read about.

Although for now, we'll say goodbye to our peasants, our pasture stirrers, our bird watcher, me Mr. Sellin, and I'll see you next time.

Bye for now.