Table of Contents, part 2

#11 Currency, Coinage

#12 Economy

#13 Government, Serfdom, and Taxes, or “Feudalism“*

#11 Currency, Coinage

“Give me a beer, a bottle a whiskey, a room for a week, a steak dinner, a shave, and a haircut, a bath, some new clothes, a hat, some boots, some oats for my horse, a woman. Here you go.” Ping! One heavy coin. You’re fine! Nobody adds up all those things you mentioned. They don’t check to see what coin it was. The guy just keeps drying the glass. Things were very vague back then….

I think Louis CK’s bit is extremely relevamt to WorldBuilding. How much did goods and services cost? How much was a coin worth? How did the coins relate to the other?

In reality the picture he paints is quite an accurate one. Any coin was very valuable, perhaps a coin could buy all of those things if you had the right one. To understand how this works and to understand how to worldbuild your own simple, sensible currencies, let’s look back at history. As a side note, I’ll only be covering coin currencies for now. At a later date we will discuss sea-shell based economies.

To an American like me and I suspect to much of the rest of the world, the British shilling, pence, and farthing system is an indecipherable, complicated mess of a currency system. But ultimately it’s probably the best way to go about creating a gold/silver currency and is not an uncommon method. I’ll explain.

First, when a country has a large reserve of silver, it needs to be quantified. This was done by the basic unit of weight, like a pound (453 grams) or its equivalent. To turn this into coins, they divided it into 240 pennies(1.88g), which were each worth quite a lot. 12 of these pennies made a shilling(22.5g). 20 shillings made a pound. But why did they choose these numbers? Well, if you made pennies any smaller, they would be too easy to break and too easy to lose. Any bigger and it would be too valuable. These denominations worked very well for the time.

Now, for any bigger transactions, handing someone a full pound silver chunk was unreasonable. For this we needed gold. Conveniently, gold usually stayed between 10-14x more valuable than silver. This mirrors the actual availability of silver and gold on earth: gold being about 10 times more rare than silver. So theoretically a gold coin of 3.5 grams would therefore be worth 35 grams of silver, or about 18.6 pence. The face value of the British 3.5 gold florin was worth 20 pence (although it was actually undervalued, people melted it down themselves because it was worth 24 pence). So we are on the right track with 10-14x.

*As a side note, usually the owners of gold/silver mines smelted their precious metals into Bullions, or big bricks. These bricks were then brought to a royal mint who made them into coins. Often kings would add incentives and perks to attract these merchants of Bullion into choosing their mint and their currency instead of a foreign currency.

There is a problem with the gold/silver currency systems of the middle ages, however. While a craftsman’s wages could earn him 1-2 shillings a week, a servant might make only 2 shillings or 24 pence a year! Does this mean a servant or serf only bought food 24 times a year? Silver was simply too valuable even in pennies for the lower classes and the vast majority of people. It’s like walking around town and the only currency in the world is either 50 dollar bills or 1000 dollar bills. The inability to liquidate assets meant that common folk were relegated to the barter economy in order to make small purchases. (and also that serfs and servants were paid in other ways, like food and clothing)

The solution, as you might expect, would be copper coins. But that’s not what happened in the middle ages. Copper was used only as a raw material and sometimes slipped into silver coins to make more of them (see Debasement). It wasn’t until long after the middle ages that copper coins became used at all. Germany in the middle ages debased its silver coins with way too much copper, but it still wasn’t a copper coin as we think of them. Another problem with copper coins, is that I can’t find a single source, a single example of an exchange rate of copper in the middle ages or renaissance.

But that won’t stop me from worldbuilding my own copper, silver, and gold currencies!

Feel free to make your own currencies, or copy this exact system into your world, or change it how you like. It’s yours to play with, I’ll just demonstrate my method. I’m going ahead and using the pound (lb) system, but this time using nice easy numbers in multiples of 10. I’ll have the Copper Pigeon, the Silver Dove, the Silver Eagle, and the Golden Dragon.

1 Silver pound (453g) will be divided 20 times into Silver Eagles (22.5g each). They weigh less than the largest coin of Great Britian so it isn’t unreasonable for a large coin as valuable as this. Just remember, the Silver Pound is a amount not a coin. Not until the modern era was there a pound coin or a paper bill. Before the modern era it was a price or an amount, not a currency.

1 Silver Eagle(22.5g) can be divided into 10 Silver Doves (2.25g each). That’s about the weight of the American Nickle, so again, not unreasonable. 200 Silver Doves equals a Silver Pound.

1 Silver Dove can be divided into 10 Copper Pigeons. Again, I have no reference for the value of copper, so I cannot say how big or heavy a Copper Pigeon is. If I want them big I would make them from pure copper. If I want them small, I’d put 5-10% silver in them to compensate for size and value.

1 Golden Dragon(4.5g) is equal to 2 Silver Eagles, or 45 grams of silver. Using gold will make transportation of large sums of money a lot easier. In history, there were 3.5g and 7g gold coins, but both of these were really only used for large transactions between rich trade companies and nobles. They were extremely uncommon in everday life. If you do want gold coins more common in your world, I suggest making a Gold Dragon Penny(2.25g) instead of the Silver Eagle(22.5)g. Just remember, a 22.5g shilling was a craftsman’s week salary, before rent, taxes, and food!

So alternatively, 10 Copper Pigeons = 1 Silver Dove. 10 Silver Doves(2.25g each) = 1 Golden Dragon Penny (2.25g). 40 Golden Dragon Pennies(45g total) = 1 Pound of Silver (453g).

Again, these are all yours to play around with. In the next section, I’ll apply what we’ve learned here to some real world pricing during the middle ages.



#12 Economy, Prices and Wages

We’ve already touched on several aspects of a world’s economy. Cities and towns, nestled next to rivers or at crossroads or in the mountains will inform you about their industries. The surplus of farms will supply those urban areas with supplies, and your craftsman may pursue different professions to produce an array of goods. The wealth of your citizens may warm their interactions with travelers and itinerant merchants. And now we’ve established a coin currency. Perhaps even your merchant class, as large and as powerful as they’ve gotten, even have a ledger and credit system! Or you’ve done none of these things, making a very interesting world indeed! Maybe you now know what an impoverished region looks like too.

So let’s talk about wages and prices. Here’s an amazingly well-sourced page for wages and prices throughout the Middle Ages. There’s a lot of eye opening stuff here. In particular the wages table.

I’ll pick some things out that I think make good benchmarks. An axe cost 5 pence(1.88g silver each). Here is a comfy video on how to build an axe. Kind of gives you an idea how much work goes into it, and the materials, tools, and expertise it takes. Imagine, it took mining, transport, smelting, forging, wood cutting, and woodcrafting, just to make one axe. Probably wasn’t all done by one guy either. 2 chisels cost 8 pence. Equally comfy video about that. 6 pence for a pair of boots.

A cow. 6-10 shillings or 72-120 pence! Expensive! A sheep. 17 pence. A gallon of ale was 1 pence. Wait, how do you just order a pint? Two chickens. 1 pence. Wait again, how much is one chicken? Here we start to see the barter economy and the need for a copper coin. Maybe that explains The Hound’s reluctance to pay for just one chicken.

On the more expensive side of things, a craftsman’s house had annual rent of 20 shillings or a pound. A suit of good armor, 4 pounds or 80 shillings. Knight’s armor, 16 pounds.

Let’s talk about wages too. An unskilled laborer could expect to make 1 pence a day. A master mason, an extremely skilled laborer, 4 pence a day or 10 shillings per month (225g of silver!) or 6 pounds a year. A master carpenter, a extremely skilled craftsman, 3 pence a day or 7 shillings 6 pence a month. A clothes-maker, 12 shilling 6 pence per month. At the other end of the scale, where the product is extremely valuable are rare, an armorer could expect around 25 shillings per month or 13 pounds a year. All of this of course, doesn’t account for rent, taxes, food, supplies, candles, and the monthly whoring budget.

Farmers varied wildly in wealth and land, crop and harvest. Which is okay! When worldbuilding an economy like this, the amount people make is completely up to you. I only use these data-points as reference when keeping my economy coherent and consistent. When getting into the nitty gritty, I try to find a base level of subsistence, and work my way up from there, establishing poverty classes, middle classes, and on up. I might not know how much a gem crafter made, but if he tries to sell to the aristocracy as well to the middle class, I’d guess he’s under an armorer and above a weaver in terms of wealth.

In case you want to get a good idea of a farmer/peasant’s income, listen to this podcast episode. Skip to around 22:30 to get straight into it.

Here’s a source from earlier that paints a pretty clear picture what medieval society looked like. Can’t recommend it enough.

Earlier, in the army section, I mentioned how supporting a large army for very long would be devastating for an economy. I talked about the 1% standing army rule. When you get into soldier’s wages, it’s easy to see why. Where as a master carpenter could make 3 pence a day, a soldier’s pay could be 4-20 pence a day, depending on rank. From the source earlier, paying the English army cost approximately 2.4 million pence in the 57 days of the Agincourt campaign, which is almost 20% of the royal income for the year of £52,400 (12.6 million pence).

I wouldn’t let this discourage you, however. Prolonged warfare was very much a thing throughout history. Find ways to wring out money from your peasant’s economy, and make that economy even bigger! Or completely subvert it. Let pillaging be your troop’s pay. Speak of money, we haven’t got to…



#13 Government, Serfdom, Taxes, or “Feudalism“*

An annual, universal “tax” in the way we think of it is a modern one. Sometimes there was regular tax at all, but when the kingdom was strapped for cash in the wake of an expensive war, troops would go to every house with a chimney, kick open the door, start looting, and call it a tax. Some kings went to every vassal lord individually and asked for gifts to keep the country running. But being able to consistently collect revenue, being able to support building projects, law, and the military is the backbone to any sustainable kingdom.

I decided to roll these different ideas into a single section since the idea of tax in the European middle ages was inextricably linked into ideas of government, nobility, serfdom, and rent. I am still hesitant to call it Feudalism, in fear of being dragged away and lectured by long-winded historians (who would be justified).

Although Feudalism Pyramid will elicit groans from Historians, it’s perhaps the easiest way to convey the bureaucratic nightmare that is the medieval government. It was a ever-changing and non-uniform system, but nevertheless it represented the most efficient tax and governing system Europe has ever known. And that’s okay because we are merely worldbuilders trying to find ideas and references for a medieval fantasy kingdom.

Let’s start from the top with Kings. Kings, in theory, owned all the lands in the entire kingdom, and gave dominion over these lands to their vassals, who in turn granted dominion over smaller parts of it to their own vassals. Here’s a pdf on the various hierarchies of nobility as well as a bunch of other medieval titles.

Say for example a Duke is promised to provide 10,000 soldiers and 5% of revenue to the King. He then appoints 10 barons, who will provide him with 1000 soldiers and 8% of their revenue. That’s 5% to the king, and 3% to the Duke. These barons then appoint their own knights and give them land. Most of the revenue is paid in food or other goods, by the way.

The important part of all of this is that these lands they are given, from King to Duke to Knight, are called Manors. These manors include 3 different parts.

The first part is their Demesne. You can consider the demesne to be their personal house, lawn and garden. They will have serfs, servants, and slaves work on this land.

The second part is the Dependent Lands. This will probably include a mix of fields that serfs work full time, and land that Villeins will “rent”. Sometimes this “rent” is payed for each harvest, sometimes these “rented” lands the Villeins will harvest for themselves and in return they work part time on the Demesne or the lord’s other fields.

The third part is the free holds. These lands are held privately by Freemen, who will pay a usually low tax either to the Lord or the King’s tax collectors directly.

As in the Justice section above, if you were a Freeman or yeoman (someone who owned no less than 100 acres, according to some) or some sort of tradesman like a miller or merchant, you’d be organized first into a unit of 10 households, called a tithing, and/or secondly grouped into a unit of 100 households, called a Hundred, with a big H. These Hundreds were then organized into counties or shires. These communities often paid taxes as a collective to Reeves.

There were several types of mayors/governors called Reeves. There were Reeves over the Hundred, who were popularly elected. There were Reeves who only dealt with serfs on a manor and who presided over a manorial court. There were town and city Reeves too. Over the shire were Shire-Reeves (where we get the word Sheriff). City and Shire-Reeves were usually appointed by a powerful noble or the king directly. Sometimes they’d appoint a Sheriff over a place called Nottingham, and then a yeoman named Robin Hood would endlessly frustrate him. Then there were High-Reeves who governed the king’s land, as kings still held their own private manors and their own free holds. Each of these Reeves collected taxes from their respective domains, and either handed it to the higher nobility over the shire, like an Earl, or directly to the king.

Also, poll taxes and tariffs were very common as a way of nobles padding their coffers. As well as fining people for “crimes”.

The confusing part of all this is that manors can envelope or be entirely enveloped by shires. Don’t let that deter or over-complicate the Kingdom you want to build. Smash it all down, have one type of noble, one type of shire-county, and no manors! Have it be more like Japanese Feudalism, where you had daimyos and samurai instead of long lists of nobility titles. Do it your own way!

Over time and as the economy improved, the percent of the population that were serfs declined and the percentage of freemen climbed. Eventually serfdom was abolished, and the manorial system followed, turning society on its head. Eventually more standardized tax systems developed.

Still the manorialism system was the most efficient the west had ever seen.

In Rome for instance, there’d be a auction for the right to tax a certain area or region for a specific length of time. The upfront lump sum payment would be the government’s revenue, and the winning bidder would spend the next couple of months or years trying to make bleed the region dry. This was very unpopular however, and one king’s revolt leaves us with the legend of pouring molten gold down a Roman Ambassador’s throat.

In Conclusion

Once again, thanks for reading.

Perhaps I’ll add more to this section later. China had many many different tax systems, Japan has very few English-language resources to figure anything concrete out, and Scandinavian countries had some pretty simplistic ones. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to point out or ask, please do so! Criticism is welcomed and encouraged as always!

Join me next time when I cover the wonderful and essential part of any medieval fantasy land, GUILDS.