Leaving Home
Although the majority of children in the Middle Ages spent their childhood almost exclusively in their parents' household, there were those who left home to live with relatives, future relatives, employers, masters in trade or even virtual strangers.
It was uncommon for children to leave home before about the age of ten or twelve. Some children who did so were noble offspring of either gender who were sent to live with the family into which they would one day marry -- or even had officially already married. In such cases, the move was less a departure from home than a transference to a new home and family.
The sons of knights occasionally lived in the castle of their father's liege-lord where they trained to be knights themselves.1 Traditionally, this move was made at the age of seven, but there was no hard and fast rule, and the origins of the concept have been obscured and romanticized in later literature to the point of folklore. Boys were just as likely to make the move at age ten or twelve or even in their early teens.
The children of poor families sometimes entered service to bring income into the household and reduce the number of mouths to feed at home. Service seldom began before age twelve, and more frequently started well into the teens. Servants lived with fairly prosperous families and were fed and often clothed by their employers. Any pains of separation experienced by the parents were somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that their offspring were cared for, frequently in far better a manner than they could offer themselves.
Apprenticeship also began in the teens, and as the centuries passed the age of acceptance grew older, due to the insistence on the part of the guilds that potential apprentices be able to read and write. In London in the early fourteenth century, thirteen was specified as the minimum age of apprenticeship by city ordinance; 2 and by the late Middle Ages, apprenticeship could begin as late as age eighteen.3
But in most homes, children stayed home, where they continued their lessons, played, helped their families, and experienced the joys and pains of growing up.
Please join me next time for The Medieval Child, Part 5: The Learning Years.
The Medieval Child Table of Contents
Notes
1. Gies, Frances, The Knight in History (Harper & Row, 1984), p. 29.
2. Hanawalt, Barbara, Growing Up in Medieval London (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 113.
3. Ibid, p. 129.
Sources and Suggested Reading
The links below will take you to a site where you can compare prices at booksellers across the web. More in-depth info about the book may be found by clicking on to the book's page at one of the online merchants.
Growing
Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in
History
by Barbara A. Hanawalt
The
Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England
by Barbara A. Hanawalt
Medieval
Children
by Nicholas Orme
Marriage
and the Family in the Middle Ages
by Frances and Joseph Gies
The
Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in
Florence 1300-1600
by Louis Haas
Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England
by Compton Reeves
The Knight in History
by Frances Gies
