A Fourth Order? New Towns and Townspeople Expansion in agriculture was accompanied by growth in three related areas: population, trade and towns. From roughly million in , Europe’s population stood at million around and million in . Better food meant a longer lifespan.
By the thirteenth century, an average European could expect to live years longer than in the eighth century. Women and girls had shorter lifespans compared to men because the latter ate better food. The towns of the Roman Empire had become deserted and ruined after its fall. But from the eleventh century, as agriculture increased and became able to sustain higher levels of population, towns began to grow again.
Peasants who had surplus grain to sell needed a place where they could set up a selling centre and where they could buy tools and cloth. This led to the growth of periodic fairs and small marketing centres which gradually developed town-like features – a town square, a church, roads where merchants built shops and homes, an office where those who governed the town could meet. In other places, towns grew around large castles, bishops’ estates, or large churches. In towns, instead of services, people paid a tax to the lords who owned the land on which the town stood.
Towns offered the prospect of paid work and freedom from the lord’s control, for young people from peasant families. ‘Town air makes free’ was a popular saying. Many serfs craving to be free ran away and hid in towns. If a serf could stay for one year and one day without his lord discovering him, he would become a free man.
Many people in towns were free peasants or escaped serfs who provided unskilled labour. Shopkeepers and merchants were numerous. Later there was need for individuals with specialised skills, like bankers and lawyers. The bigger towns had populations of about , .
They could be said to have formed a ‘fourth’ order. The basis of economic organisation was the guild. Each craft or industry was organised into a guild, an association which controlled