Question

The Manorial System & Economy
15. Manor:
Manorialism:
Guild:
Apprentice:
Merchant:
Charter:
Three-field system:

Answer 1

- Manor: the lord’s agricultural estate in medieval Europe, including the lord’s house (manor house), peasant village, arable fields, meadows, commons, and mills. It was the basic unit of rural economy and social organization.

- Manorialism: the rural economic and social system centered on manors in which peasants (serfs or tenants) worked the lord’s land (the demesne) and owed labor, rents, or services in exchange for protection and the right to cultivate strips of land for their subsistence.

- Guild: an organized association of craftsmen or merchants in a town that regulated a trade—setting standards, controlling quality and prices, training members, and protecting economic interests. There were craft (artisan) guilds and merchant guilds.

- Apprentice: a young person bound to a master craftsman to learn a trade for a set number of years; lived and worked with the master, received training (usually little or no wages), and could progress to journeyman and eventually master status.

- Merchant: a trader who bought, sold, or exchanged goods for profit; merchants fostered long‑distance trade, marketplaces and fairs, the growth of towns, and the rise of a commercial middle class.

- Charter: a written document (usually granted by a king or lord) that defined and guaranteed rights and privileges—commonly used to found towns or grant merchants/towns self‑government, market rights, tax exemptions, or liberties from manorial control.

- Three-field system: a crop-rotation method dividing arable land into three parts—one planted with a winter crop, one with a spring crop, and one left fallow—improving soil fertility and increasing agricultural yields compared with the earlier two-field system.