Practice question · Multiple choice
A serf who lived unclaimed in a chartered town for a year and a day became free under a widely held custom. Why was that rule so damaging to rural lordship?
Hints
- Ask what a lord would have to do to prevent it working.
- Reclaiming a runaway means finding him in a town whose court is not yours.
Show the answer
D. It made every nearby town a standing route out of dependence, and lords could not police it cheaply
Why
Enforcement was the problem. Recovering a runaway required identifying him inside a jurisdiction with its own court, its own interest in keeping newcomers, and no obligation to help. The rule did not free many people in absolute terms, but it set a floor: a lord who pressed too hard risked losing the tenant entirely.
Practise Towns and Commerce, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History II is free to start.
More questions on Towns and Commerce, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
- Which agricultural changes contributed to the population growth of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries?
- Under three-field rotation, what percentage of the arable is under crop in a given year, to the nearest whole…
- The commercial revolution created instruments that accommodated the Church's ban on usury rather than…
- The medieval prohibition on usury effectively prevented lending at interest in western Europe.
- Complete the account of the contracts that carried long-distance trade.
- Arrange the steps by which agricultural change supported urban growth.
- Sort each item by whether it is best described as a TECHNIQUE or as an INSTITUTION.
- Genoa and Florence began striking gold coin again in 1252, and Venice from 1284, after centuries in which the…
- Estimates of European population growth between 1000 and 1300 vary widely, and no figure for the period is…