The Clothmaking Effect

The Clothmaking Effect

Suppose you were a peasant living in England during the late 14^thcentury. You live in a rural agricultural town making low wages. Life is not going so well, you are a farmer and crops are just not producing much income anymore. 

On the other hand, in the wealthier urban areas of England at the time, the cloth industry was growing increasingly popular. The demand for cloth is increasing by the day. As time goes on, the manufacturing of cloth is becoming easier and easier with the addition of new technology. As a result, rural areas became a hotspot for clothmaking. Clothmaking towns began popping up all over the rural areas of England. The people who lived in these towns were not wealthy though, the wealthy would never leave their urban centers. The people that lived in these towns were peasants. These peasants benefit the cloth industry tremendously with the addition of cheap labor. The labor is not just cheap, there is an abundance of it also. This new cheap labor creates even more room for profit in the cloth industry and is what leads to the economic growth. 

Clothmaking

Suddenly there are now jobs available in this industry of clothmaking. I am still a farmer right now, making poor wages, so I think I might try this clothmaking industry. After I farm, I sell cloths here andthere and I make better money than I ever have. With this extra money I am not even close to struggling any longer. 

The Clothmaking industry is growing larger than ever before. The quality and efficiency of clothmaking was also improving, which only increased the demand. Different Variations of cloth were being used at this time. England switched to woollen cloth, surprisingly increasing the amount of trade. England was known for having one of the best quality woollen cloth in the world at this time. England now was known for selling cloth nationally and internationally.

I am enjoying my new line of work very much. I am making such good money that I am making my wife and children contribute to the clothmaking. I work countless hours making one cloth, therefore I need all the help I can get. There are no regulations, so we can never get in trouble, we only make more income. We have also been spending our income lately on more cloth and other goods. We especially like the colored cloth, it is more expensive, but many times people give it to us as payment. 

The clothmaking industry is responsible for a large portion of the economic success in England during the 14^thand 15^thcenturies. Peasants played a much larger role in the success of the cloth industry than most people realize. If the opportunity to move to rural areas with low paid peasants as workers did not arise, I believe the cloth industry in England would not have had the same success. 


Kevin Antoniotti

The Horn

Medieval Musical Instrument: The Horn

The horn, as its name suggests, was made from the horns of animals, keeping its curved shape, but eventually were made of wood or metal. As a musical instrument it belongs to the “wind” category and in its origins was more famous among military armies or warrior peoples. The horn, at the beginning and the bugle later, was very appreciated as an instrument of war, in games, in hunting exercises and in some religious rituals or to communicate over long distances.

War Horn from the Middle Ages

With the development and better knowledge of the metals, a new stage begins for the wind instruments since the bronze is a suitable material for its construction, improving its sonority. Around the 9th century, music became more and more present thanks to jugglers and troubadours who played and sang on the street to entertain people; On the other hand there were the imposing buildings dedicated to music that impel the most talented to compose and sing their verses and in most of these shows, the audience ended up dancing to the rhythm of the music.

The best known instruments of medieval times were the lute, the drum, the trumpets and the triangle. Unfortunately, not much information is known about what music was like, but what we do know with certainty is that music and poetry went hand in hand. As for the dances, always cheerful, it seems that they were the favorite entertainment of the court and of the plebeians. The horns or medieval trumpets were used often by hunters and even today they are still used in hunting.

Medieval Clothmaking in late 14th and Early 15th Century England

              The clothmaking industry had a profound impact not only late Medieval economics, but also on how both religious and lay people identified one another amongst their respective ranks. At the onset of the 13^th century, the clothmaking industry was rather small. In fact, most people made clothes for themselves and only the truly wealthy and the nobility were purchasing clothing or garments. However, as technology began to advance, urban centers became hubs for clothmaking and production began to increase dramatically. Eventually, rural communities began bolstering the urban clothmaking efforts, and clothmaking towns began to spring up across Medieval England.

                                                 An example of the dyeing process during this time

              These rural cloth production centers are incredibly interesting, and the resulting boom and eventual bust of the clothmaking market can perhaps be attributed to their entrance into the industry. These towns gave the rent-paying low class of the time access to money, as wages were generally decent for men. Women and boys stood to benefit the most from these unregulated, small production centers. Since clothmaking guilds in urban centers barred women and children from entry, women and children were able to work in these rural clothmaking communities for wages that were excellent compared to what they could make elsewhere.

               As cloth production rose, supply naturally increased. This spike in supply was met by a parallel spike in demand – since more lower-class people were earning decent wages (it is estimated that by the 15^th century, almost a quarter of men made their living from clothmaking in England), they wanted to get in on buying clothes. In fact, in the early 15^th century almost 100% (roughly 98%, to be exact) of cloths made were sold domestically. This phenomenon, coupled with large war orders of cloth at the time, led to an incredibly prosperous clothmaking industry into the 15^th century. The beginning and middle of the 15^th century saw the clothmaking industry continue to ascend, as exports rose to 40% and prices, wages, and rents all rose. However, by 1460 cloth prices fell to 50% of their 1440 highs, and a depression ensued.

               The rise and fall of the clothmaking industry at this time shares more parallels than meets the eye to the Great Depression the United States faced in the early 20^th century. Consumers at that time were too invested into the market and were buying things they could not afford (that they were manufacturing in their factory jobs), creating an unsustainable, self-reinforcing supply and demand boom. Lowborn clothmakers in Medieval England were also producing a huge amount of a good and used their wages to purchase that very good. While the Great Depression was obviously a much more complex economic phenomenon, it is interesting to see it share a parallel with a Medieval economic disaster. Despite that the clothmaking market saw a brief depression, on the whole it rebounded and became extremely lucrative for England in the ensuing centuries.

               With an abundance of clothes flooding the consumer market, people of the time needed to find a way to organize themselves by social order using clothes. Sumptuary laws were enacted to curtail “sinful” lavish dressing and also to keep lowborn laypeople from wearing certain clothes or garments. It became quite an issue. In fact, there were Medieval “parenting” books which urged parents to dress their children conservatively and according to their social order. The secular clergy also regulated what clergymen at the time could wear to established a type of “uniform,” free of bright colors, jewels, and short-cut cloaks.

Armor and Weapons

http://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-weapons/

For this assignment, I decided to research weapons, armor, and other protective articles used during wars during the Medieval England period. The first article I found was named Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Hoard-warriors. Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Hoard-warriors. This article provides a background and foundations for understanding the lifestyle for this period. Kingdoms were beginning to form due to the beginning of the colonization of tribes. The wardrobe during this time mostly represented danger and violence which installed fear in the lives of the common people. The enemies were referred to as “monsters”. The knights who fought against them should have been looked up to as heroes but instead, the knights were seen as contributors to the terror of war on the battlefield. The protective wardrobes were made to represent gods. The gold accessories added to the weapons symbolized wealth, ranking, and most importantly, power. The technology behind the weapons was more advanced than we think. The helmets were designed with different shapes, textures, and sized with the sole purpose of destroying the enemy. Some of the warriors wore a cross on their helmet which proves how much religion influenced their lives. The second article I read explains the beliefs and customs represented in the weaponry. The article is called The Trumpington Cross in Context. It explains how religion is a lifestyle and how religion influenced the knights. The articles explore and investigate burial grounds from the seventh century. Four distinguishable groups were found. Three of the four were found with similar accessories such as gold, riches and other items which represented wealth. One of the items were combs carved from bones or antlers which means the person was well maintained. Along with the combs, there were gold pins, knives, blankets, ash boxes, and weapons. The bodies that were soldiers were buried with gold garments to show respect and gratitude for their services on the battlefield. The ironworks surrounding the bodies showed what religion they followed and how much religion was important for them. The female bodies found in the burials were very interesting and noticeably different from the men who were buried. During these times, females were not respected so for their bodies to be buried with gold pieces and garnets was fascinating. Similar to the men, the women who were buried with these expensive jewelry pieces represented their status. This article gives a perspective of females during this time. The information gives readers a sense of how women might have lived during the Anglo-Saxon time period. The last article that I will discuss is named Explaining Anglo Saxon Military Efficiency: The Landscape of Mobilization. This article explores a battlefield with a mission figure out the strategic management done by military officials to make certain calls in battles. The purpose was to investigate how the officials made decisions during war regarding their men, the opposing side, and the common people. There was an obvious sense of teamwork in war, after the war, making weapons, and other aspects. The women of the knights contributed in making the weapons and providing food for the soldiers. This article connects with the other two because it talks about how life was like during wars. Although it focuses on military approaches, weapons and armor were included in how they were going to defeat their enemies.

The production and significance of Swords in the Anglo-Saxon period

The sword is the most revolutionary and iconic weapon of medieval warfare. Swords were the ultimate weapon of the battlefield, and also had a significant amount of symbolism amongst all of Medieval Europe. Swords were given to knights to fight in combat and as representation power. There was an inseparable bond between the knight and his sword, and it never left his side. Knights were even buried with their swords. You would also never see a king without his sword. A Kings sword symbolized his rulership of the land, and that he is ready to defend himself from enemies. In literature, swords were always included in stories as having an important role of symbolism and were usually important enough to have names or even unnatural powers, such as the sword hrunting in the story of Beowulf. Hrunting has the magical quality of never being able to be broken by anyone that wields it. As for sword development, Swords were manufactured through many different techniques of grinding. Sword manufacturing dates back to the Anglo-Saxon time period, and has been seen in poems such as the battle of Brunanburh. Swords were usually made of metal, and were shaped to have a sharp point and a hilt to safely be held. The most common way that swords were sharped were through grindstones. A Grindstone was a large disk-shaped sharp stone that was attached to cranks that could be used to spin the stone quickly. A sword would be pressed against the stone while it is rotated, and the metal would become sharpened. The grindstone rubbing against the sword would cause metal to shave off into a fine point, which added the sharpness. The sword was then treated with whetstone to produce an edge on the sword and smooth over rough edges. An alternative method for sharpening swords was by using millstone. This method is sometimes referred to as mylenscearpum, which translates to mill-sharpened. For this method, the sword was placed on a surface and a millstone was rubbed against it, which filed down the metal of the sword kind of like how a nail filer works.
  
 manufacturing and sword sharpening in 9th century

This picture shows an example of both of these sharpening methods in a mill-camp constructed specifically to create swords. The bottom right is the grindstone method and the bottom left is a sword being filed with millstone. The mass creation of swords this way really had an impact on all of medieval Europe. Swords were decisive in battles, and soon became a staple of warfare in the middle ages.

Swords will always be remembered throughout history not just as a weapon, but as a symbol of the rich history of medieval Europe. for centuries after its time, the sword was always used in some way, and is a weapon that will truly never die off.