1. 1 Ch. 14 Sec. 3 The Growth of Towns

2. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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