How did people live in the Middle Ages?
      During the Middle Ages there were three kinds of people. The three kinds of people were the lords, churchmen and serfs.The lords lived on large farms called manors. The manors were like plantations.
    Almost anything a person needed was on the manor. Food was grown on the manor. There were animals for food on the manor. Often beer or wine was made on the manor. Clothes were also made on the manor.
     The lords did not really own the manors. All land in the country  was owned by the king. But the king could not control all of his lands. So the king gave large amounts of land to certain trusted men .  The land the king gave was called a fief (rhymes with "leaf"). A man who got land from the king was called a vassal (rhymes with "castle"). A vassal was someone who got a fief from his king.
What did the king get from his vassals?
     Vassals helped the king rule the countryside, but sometimes a vassal needed help from the king. In other words, the vassal helped the king and the king helped the vassal.
What was life like for the lord of the manor?
     The lords lived in stone castles. In the movies we see lords living in beautiful, comfortable, colorful  stone castles. But movies do not always show things as they were. Castles were not very comfortable and there were many things that were not beautiful. The castles were not very big. Most castles had only two rooms. One room was the lord's bedroom. The other room was a big meeting and eating place called a great hall.
     In the hall were big tables with stools around them. There was a big fireplace for heating and cooking in the hall too. But it was very cold in the hall. To keep the hall warm, straw was put on the floor. But the straw got very dirty. When people ate they could drop food and bones on the floor. The lords liked to keep many dogs. The dogs could eat most of the food in the straw. But rats got in the straw, too. Both dogs and rats had fleas. The fleas settled on the people. Most people had lots of flea bites. And sometimes the fleas carried a terrible disease called the plague.
     The dirty straw with its dogs and rats made the castle smell. Castles were very dirty and smelly. Around the castles were moats. Moats were large ditches filled with water. Moats stopped enemies from coming into the castle. Often the dirty straw was pushed into the moat. This made the moat very dirty and smelly.
     You can see that castles were very unhealthy places to live. But the lords did have fun. The lord and his friends often hunted wild animals for sport. Many lords had hunting birds. The lord's hunting birds were called falcons. The lords taught falcons to kill other birds in the sky. For fun the lord and his friends fought each other in contests called jousting . The lord and his friends would fight on horseback with long spears called lances.
     The lords followed a belief called chivalry. Chivalry was very important to the lords. The beliefs of chivalry told the lords how to act. In Chivalry the lord was to help the weak. In chivalry love was very important. A lord was to love a lady. But the lady that the lord loved was sometimes not his own wife. The lord might love someone else's wife. All the lord wanted from her was a smile and a few nice words. Sometimes a lady would give the lord her scarf. This made the lord very happy. A lord might go into battle with the lady's scarf around his neck or around his lance.
     But, what about the lord's own wife?  The lord married her for money or land, not for love. The woman had little or no say in the marriage since it was arranged between her father and the lord. Some lords were very mean to their wives. Some lords would beat their wives. The Catholic Church made a law about wife-beating that said  a man should not beat his wife with a paddle bigger than 18 inches in length