Lorsh
Varlot
⚔ =- Military responsibilities
1 crown (🜲) = 100 silver pence
______________________________________
ROYALTY, PEERAGE
King / Queen
Duke
Earl
Baron / Baroness
MONASTIC
Archabbot
Archprior
Abbot
Prior
Deacon
URBAN
Overlord - A peer, vassal, or knight.
Urban gentry, patricians, guildmasters
Artisans, merchants
Craftsmen
Workers
RURAL
Lordling | 🜲 250-500 | ⚔ Officer
A caste of privileged, hereditary local rulers that act as the arbiters of disputes between freeborn and servile tenants on their land, at the head of a Manor Court based out of their home. Lordlings usually only have one manor, rather than the barons, who have multiple.
Knight | 🜲 90 | ⚔ Retinue service, castle guard duty, officer
An equestrian caste of military elites, now considered by themselves to be low-ranking nobles. Compared to a squire or man-at-arms, knights are required to have a jackoplates, a greathelm, and mail barding for their horse.
Squire | 🜲 75 | ⚔ Retinue service, castle guard duty
Though not every aspiring noble ends up becoming a knight, their social purpose as highborn remains unchanged; serve in the heavy cavalry. Squires that turn twenty-one are usually freed from their master, even if they are not yet knights themselves. They are then left to distinguish themselves as a Squire-at-Arms, fighting in the same manner as a knight, but without the title. Mature squires usually serve with lance on horseback, wearing mail hauberk, coif and chausses. Their horses may be unbarded, or have a padded or leather protective trapper.
Serjeant | 🜲 48 | ⚔ Retinue service, castle guard duty
Sergeants are fief-holding commoners serving as armed retainers. They are roughly worth half a knight in value, and receive the corresponding amount of land. They usually serve with a mail garment and a saddle horse. Though they tend to be in possession of a mount, they tend to not have armor on their legs, making them more vulnerable on horseback. Some sergeants eventually come to have the same level of equipment as their higher-ranking counterparts, at which point they are called Sergeants-at-Arms.
=====
Yeoman | 🜲 24 | ⚔ Select levy, castle guard duty
Freeborn people with sizable homesteads, plentiful tracts of land, and many animals. Yeomen often employ folk from the lower classes of peasantry to work in their houses as servants, or as farmhands in their fields. Many yeomen are part-time feudal retainers, serving in positions such as falconers and master huntsmen. When summoned to the militia, they are expected to come equipped (at their own expense) with sword, horse, and at least a mail corselet for armor. Armed yeomen are a step above the regular soldiery, but still below the sergeants and men-at-arms.
Freeholder | 🜲 12 | ⚔ Ordinary levy
Middling freeborn peasants, a step above the lowly smallholders. They have made a decent living for themselves, and often own their own horses and ploughs. They are required by Militia Ordinances to keep a higher standard of equipment than that of smallholders, or otherwise provide more money in lieu of service. When equipped as levies, they wear iron or steel helmets, and padded body armor such as aketons and gambesons.
Smallholder | Less than 🜲 12 | ⚔ Reserve levy
The poorest free peasants, some of which have less money than well-to-do serfs. Their dwellings are quite similar to that of serfs, if only slightly more spacious. Over half the free population in the countryside tends to be made up of smallholders. They are still required by law to provide military service, but since they can only afford a shoddy degree of equipment, they are rarely called up unless it's an emergency. Depending on the Militia Ordinances in place, sometimes smallholders are exempt from serving in person, as long as they provide funds or provisions to mobilize someone else.
Serf
These unfree peasants make up the majority of the population, living their lives in bondage to a manor or some other estate. They farm some strips of land for the profit of their master (the 'demesne'), and others for their own subsistence (the 'commons'). Serfs may also receive summonses to repair bridges, fell trees, dig ditches, or whatever else their rightful lord requires of them. Serfs are entirely subject to the local manorial courts, where their overlord has the right to charge fines and administrate 'lower justice' to all servile and free tenants. For 'higher' crimes, freeborn have the right to a trial in a lord's high court, but in the case of serfs, their master can simply sentence them to death and sequester their property.
Cotter
Around half of the serf population is made up of the subclass of cotters, though the proportion is higher in poorer areas, and lower vice-versa. They are the servile version of smallholders, with no property aside from a single cottage or hut with an attached garden or croft, growing only the minimum amount of food required to support their families. They are too poor to pay much in the way of taxes, and so they are treated more gently in that regard; manor courts may even forgive them for certain fines, just to keep them from being ruined. Without their own fields to tend aside from their master's, cotters use their spare time to make extra money where they can, doing odd jobs around the village and hiring themselves out as servants and farmhands to wealthier peasants, including richer serfs. The cotters are often reliant on charity, mostly from the Holy Temple or their neighbors.
Vagabond
Landless people living on the fringe of society, unprotected by any lord. They are often starving, penniless and barefoot. Many are beggars, scavengers and thieves, while others roam from place to place, finding seasonal work in villages or odd jobs in towns. Having no overlord, and no money to pay fines, they go unprotected by the courts. When camps of them become a nuisance, they may be driven out or even summarily killed by the local authorities.
Last edited:
