Good Morrow! I am James and I make my living as a merchant. I live in a town call Wallender with my lovely wife, Emily, our nine-year-old son, Paul, my journeyman, Brian, and my apprentice, Mark. My son Paul is already learning my trade and will one day become a merchant and take over my business.
I’m a merchant so I can tell you travel to all over the world. But we also know that we can’t travel to too far because the Earth is flat. Travel in the middle Ages was slow, uncomfortable, and usually dangerous. In the middle Ages, it would have taken a very fast horse over two days to travel the same distance. Most people walked because horses were very expensive and only the rich could afford them. Any heavy loads were transported on the ocean or by river. Robbers abounded on both sea and land and robbed and killed the innocent. Most people didn’t travel at all. Common people sometimes lived their whole lives never traveling more than 10 miles from the place where they were born.
I can also tell you about merchant’s guild. As more people became craftsmen, people of the same craft began to band together. They found that together they could do more than any one of them alone could do, so they banded together and began an organization called a guild. Each line of business had its own guild: butchers, bakers, and many others. The purpose of the guild was to make sure its members produced high quality goods and were treated fairly. These guilds became very powerful in towns toward the end of the middle Ages. If a stranger came into a town, he could not sell his goods unless he paid a toll and obeyed the guilds rules. The guild also took care of the widow and children of a merchant who died and punished members who used false weights or poor materials.
Most people worked as farmers during the beginning of the middle Ages because farming methods were inefficient and most of the population was needed to farm the land for food. As farming methods improved towards the beginning of the eleventh century, more people were able to leave their farms and earn their living by becoming craftsmen and traders. As these people came together to practice their trades, they formed the first towns. The people in towns were free; they owed no service and obedience to a lord. Instead, the people paid a tax to the lords who owned the land on which the town stood. A lord mayor led the town’s government and a council, who passed laws that, was made public by a town crier with a bell.
Last but no least, I can tell you about the inventions and the discoveries that I saw all around the world when I was traveling. The people from all over Europe wrote the numbers 1-10 like this during the twelfth century: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X. These numbers are called Roman numerals. During the middle Ages, everyone wrote numbers this way. Gunpowder, first invented by the Chinese and used by them for firework displays, fireworks came to Europe in the fourteen-century. Early guns were quicker to fire and kill their bearer than the enemy. As guns became more reliable and practical, they began to be used with greater frequency.
I’ve taught all the things that I learned form traveling all over the places. What is your time like? Does it still have trade going all over the world? Is the Earth still flat? What kind of new inventions do you guys have? Okay, That’s already a lot of questions. If you have time, try to answer those questions and tell me. I need to go to sleep first; I need to go to Asia to trade tomorrow.
