The villein and his wife and children worked from daybreak to dusk in the fields, except for Sundays and holydays. He had certain land to farm for his own family, but had to have his grain milled at his lord's mill at the lord's price. He had to retrieve his wandering cattle from his lord's pound at the lord's price. He was expected to give a certain portion of his own produce, whether grain or livestock, to his lord. However, if he fell short, he was not put off his land. When his daughter or son married, he had to pay a "merchet" to his lord. He could not have a son educated without the lord's permission, and this usually involved a fee to the lord. His best beast at his death, or "heriot", went to his lord. If he wanted permission to live outside the manor, he paid "chevage" yearly. Woodpenny was a yearly payment for gathering dead wood. Sometimes a "tallage" payment was taken at the lord's will. The villein's oldest son usually took his place on his land and followed the same customs with respect to the lord. For an heir to take his dead ancestor's land, the lord demanded payment of a "relief", which was usually the amount of a year's income but sometimes as much as the heir was willing to pay to have the land. The usual aids were also expected to be paid.
A large village also had a smith, a wheelwright, a millwright, a tiler and thatcher, a shoemaker and tanner, a carpenter wainwright and carter.
Markets were about twenty miles apart because a farmer from the outlying area could then carry his produce to the nearest town and walk back again in the daylight hours of one day. In this local market he could buy foodstuffs, livestock, household goods, fuels, skins, and certain varieties of cloth.
The cloth was crafted by local weavers, dyers, and fullers, who made the cloth full and dense by washing, soaping, beating, and agitating it. Then its surface could be raised with teazle-heads and cropped or sheared to make a nap. Some cloth was sold to tailors to make into clothes. Butchers bought, slaughtered, and cut up animals to sell as meat. Some was sold to cooks, who sold prepared foods. The hide was bought by the tanner to make into leather. The leather was sold to shoemakers and glovemakers. Millers bought harvested grain to make into flour. Flour was sold to bakers to make into breads. Wood was bought by carpenters and by coopers, who made barrels, buckets, tubs, and pails. Tilers, oil-makers and rope-makers also bought raw material to make into finished goods for sale. Wheelwrights made ploughs, harrows, carts, and later waggons. Smiths and locksmiths worked over their hot fires.
The nation grew with the increase of population, the development
of towns, and the growing mechanization of craft industries.
There were watermills for crafts in all parts of the nation.
There were also some iron furnaces.
Stone bridges over rivers could accommodate one person traveling by foot or by horseback and were steep and narrow.
Merchants, who had come from the low end of the knightly class or high end of the villein class, settled around the open market areas, where main roads joined. They had plots narrow in frontage along the road and deep. Their shops faced the road, with living space behind or above their stores. Town buildings were typically part stone and part timber as a compromise between fire precautions and expense.
Towns, as distinct from villages, had permanent markets. As towns grew, they paid a fee to obtain a charter for self-government from the King giving the town judicial and commercial freedom. These various rights were typically expanded in future times. Such a town was called a "borough" and its citizens or landholding freemen "burgesses". They were literate enough to do accounts. Selling wholesale could take place only in a borough. The King assessed a tallage [ad hoc tax] usually at ten per cent of property or income. Henry standardized the yard as the length of his own arm.
London had at least twenty wards, each governed by its own alderman. Most of them were named after people. London was ruled by sixteen families linked by business and marriage ties. These businesses supplied luxury goods to the rich and included the goldsmiths [sold cups, dishes, girdles, mirrors, purses knives, and metal wine containers with handle and spout], vintners [wine merchants], mercers [sold textiles, haberdashery, combs, mirrors, knives, toys, spices, ointments, and drugs], drapers, and pepperers, which later merged with the spicerers to become the "grocers". These businesses had in common four fears: royal interference, foreign competition, displacement by new crafts, and violence by the poor and escaped villeins who found their way to the city.
London in Middlesex county received this charter for self-government and freedom from the financial and judicial organization of the shire: