1 Ch. 14 Sec. 3 The Growth of Towns

2 The Rights of Townspeople As towns grew, townspeople no longer fit into the manorial system They were makers & traders of goods, not farmers Manor lords, however still controlled the towns

3 Some towns gained the right to self-gov’t peacefully; others resorted to violence In time, European townspeople gained four basic rights: freedom, exemption, town justice, & commercial privileges First, anyone who lived in a town for a year & a day became free, including serfs

4 Second, townspeople were exempt from having to work on the manor Third, towns had their own courts Fourth, townspeople could sell goods freely in the town market & charge outside traders a fee

5 Guilds Each town had a merchant guild, an association of merchants & workers created to protect their rights to trade & to help out members & their families In time, skilled workers formed craft guilds, which set standards for working conditions Each guild had members from a single craft such as weaving

6 The guilds took care of ill members & controlled the training of boys & men in their craft First, a boy served as an apprentice – his parents paid a master worker to house, feed, clothe, & train the boy for several years Then he became a journeymen, a skilled worker who was paid wages by a master

7 If the journeyman made a masterpiece – a piece of work worthy of a master – then he became a guild member & opened his own shop

8 Medieval Towns In time, guild members became the middle class – a class of skilled workers between the upper class of nobles & lower class of poor & unskilled workers The middle class favored kings over nobles bcuz kings provided stable gov’ts that protected trade, business, & property

9 Towns offered serfs a chance to improve their lives; they could learn a craft or become traders & move into the middle class Some serfs escaped their manors; others were pushed off as farming methods changed Serfs who stayed on the manors sold their crops at town markets & paid their lords w/ $ rather than labor

10 The Black Death Most cities had fewer than 2,000 people Since cities had little land, houses were built several stories high; each story extended out beyond the one below it At their tops, houses almost touched over the street

11 Cities were exciting places, but they were also dark, unsafe, dirty, & unhealthy; waste was dumped into open gutters, & disease spread quickly Beginning in 1347, a terrible plague called the Black Death swept throughout Europe It spread along trade routes, entering ports on trading ships

12 Black rats on the ships carried the disease; it spread to people by bites from fleas on the rats Entire villages and towns were wiped out By some estimates, 25 million people died in Europe w/in four years – about one-third of the pop.

13 The Black Death shook people’s faith, & the church lost power; the upper class also lost power Workers, now in short supply, demanded higher wages; in some countries peasants started uprisings