Why Did Medieval Peasants Get More Days Off Than You?

A medieval peasant worked something like 150 days a year. You work about 225. The version of this you've seen online gets the reason backwards: that time off wasn't a gift from the Church. It was leverage, bought at the price of a plague that killed a third of Europe — and the law came for it almost immediately. Wages capped. Refusing to work made a crime. Their favourite sport banned by more than thirty separate laws over three hundred years. They kept playing anyway. MUCK & INK — medieval life, properly explained. New video every week. SOURCES Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (1991) — the origin of the 150-day figure, taken from economic historian Gregory Clark. Snopes fact-check of the 150-day claim — verdict: Mixture. Humphries & Weisdorf support a figure near 150 for certain decades; the Adam Smith Institute disputes it. Ordinance of Labourers 1349 and Statute of Labourers 1351, Edward III. Peasants' Revolt, 1381. 1314: football banned in the City of London by Nicholas de Farndon, on behalf of Edward II. 1363: Edward III's proclamation on archery, banning handball, football, hockey, cock-fighting and the throwing of stone, wood and iron. Over 30 separate laws against football in England, 1314-1667. Death of Henry, son of William of Ellington — Ulgham, Northumberland, 1280. Nine Men's Morris boards scratched into cloister benches: Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury, Westminster, Chester. 13th-century Somerset manorial custumal — the lord's Christmas obligations, including the loaf for the shepherd's dog. UK: 28 days statutory minimum, on top of weekends. US: the FLSA requires no payment for time not worked. Estimates of the medieval working year vary widely by region, century and source. The figures here are best estimates, not exact records.A medieval peasant worked something like 150 days a year. You work about 225. The version of this you've seen online gets the reason backwards: that time off wasn't a gift from the Church. It was leverage, bought at the price of a plague that killed a third of Europe — and the law came for it almost immediately. Wages capped. Refusing to work made a crime. Their favourite sport banned by more than thirty separate laws over three hundred years. They kept playing anyway. MUCK & INK — medieval life, properly explained. New video every week. SOURCES Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (1991) — the origin of the 150-day figure, taken from economic historian Gregory Clark. Snopes fact-check of the 150-day claim — verdict: Mixture. Humphries & Weisdorf support a figure near 150 for certain decades; the Adam Smith Institute disputes it. Ordinance of Labourers 1349 and Statute of Labourers 1351, Edward III. Peasants' Revolt, 1381. 1314: football banned in the City of London by Nicholas de Farndon, on behalf of Edward II. 1363: Edward III's proclamation on archery, banning handball, football, hockey, cock-fighting and the throwing of stone, wood and iron. Over 30 separate laws against football in England, 1314-1667. Death of Henry, son of William of Ellington — Ulgham, Northumberland, 1280. Nine Men's Morris boards scratched into cloister benches: Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich, Salisbury, Westminster, Chester. 13th-century Somerset manorial custumal — the lord's Christmas obligations, including the loaf for the shepherd's dog. UK: 28 days statutory minimum, on top of weekends. US: the FLSA requires no payment for time not worked. Estimates of the medieval working year vary widely by region, century and source. The figures here are best estimates, not exact records.