The Town

The towns of high Medieval England are small. The capitol, London. has a population of about 20,000 in the 12th Century, however no other settlement in the land boasts more than ten thousand men and women in their environs. Most towns are very small, with populations as low as 500 men and women, matched by some large villages. The difference between the large village and the small town is that many, if not most, of the population do not make their living from agriculture. In fact, they make their living relying on crafts and trade. Some towns of all sizes also have specialized legal rights. This section concentrates on the larger towns, with the special rights, because if the town has no legal rights, it will be governed as a village. Smaller towns appear similar to villages.

Many of the towns of England, especially the older and larger ones, have walls. These walls are kept up and maintained by the citizens. Outside the walls, along the main routes into town, are collections of cottages. These cottages often hold the marginal members of the community, including the poorest residents. Both inside and outside the walls, sewage is dumped into cesspools and cesspits, or open gutters along the streets. Animals are often slaughtered over the gutters, and the remains often are left where they fall. Plumbed water is extremely rare, although not completely unknown in the richest houses, and the water source is often the same river into which the gutters empty. Often as a result, the life expectancy for the poor is substantially worse in the town than in the country, as those who survive into adulthood are expected to die in their mid-thirties. The causes are disease or the ever present danger of fire.

Property
The people's wealth is unequally distributed in the towns as it is in the countryside. About 5% are rich, with property worth fifty pounds of silver or more. Below them are the majority of the craftsmen and merchants, with about 15% with property owned and worth around two pounds to fifty pounds of silver. Further 30% have property worth less than two pounds of silver. Next comes the servants, petty retailers, and laborers making up 40% of the population. So, at the bottom are the disadvantaged poor -- widows, the aged, and the crippled -- making up about 10% of the population, and totally reliant on charity.