Unless you’re very lucky, the correct answer for almost everyone who’s posted so far is “peasant.”
500 years ago most people were peasants. It wasn’t a choice. If you were really lucky you were born to nobility or wealth and got to do something else. But probably not. The career counselor was likely gonna make you a peasant. If you lived near the water maybe you would have been a fisherman, which was just like being a peasant, but with more drowning.
Everyone likes to think they would have been a scholar, or a travelling musician, or something smarty-pants. No, probably not. You would have been a peasant.
My grandfather 500 years ago was an English soldier in Calais, and a landowner in Sussex and Kent.
500 years ago? Under Marshall of Calais, holding a Crown tenement in Fisherstrete in Calais and an annuity of £20 out of the revenues of the town.
502 years ago? Squire of the Body of Henry VIII, and Bailiff of the Scavage of Calais and the Isle of Colne.
504 years ago? Commander of the Garrison of Calais. “About five of the clocke in the morning the gate of Calis, called Bullongue gate, was opened, and by permission of the deputie one Culpeper, the under marshall, with two hundred archers under a banner of Saint George, issued forth,’ and 'set so fiercelie on that finallie the Frenchmen were discomfited and four and twentie of them slaine, besides twelve score that were made prisoners and all the ordnance and bootie again recouered. These prisoners were brought to Calais and there sold in open market.”
His son, in addition to holding lands in Sussex and Kent, was a lawyer who worked for Cromwell (we’ve had lawyers in the family for over 800 years, and I’m a lawyer now), was Custodian of Allington Castle, was a Justice of the Peace, and received some of the spoil of the monasteries, including a grant of an annuity charged on the priory of Christ Church at Canterbury, and the seizin of the lands of the dissolved priory of Losenham.
Huh. Wandering egghead. I like the sound of that. Boldly walking into town to ask for cites in theological debates and correct peasants’ pronounciation of foreign words, then disappearing in the sunset…
Mother of The Village Idiot. Probably Toothless Mother of the Village Idiot. Definitely a peasant, I’m reading of various occupations, but I do think most people then lived short, brutish lives just trying to live for 35-40 years tilling a patch of soil. Being a brewster, or a miller or blacksmith required being born into a family that did that kind of thing. You have to have money to start up a business, after all, and the common peon hardly got a salary for his labors. Women got even less.
Like Rala, I would love to be a herbalist/apothecary/doctor. I’m good with botany right now, my favourite subject in highschool were biology and chemistry, and I’ve always been interested in medicine and pick up bits and pieces from everywhere. I would have needed someone to tend to my herb garden, though, I have black thumbs instead of green ones.
My grandmother was an apothecary back in the thirties. She’s the one on the left She used to say it was the happiest time of her life.
I come from a family that 500 years ago were lesser nobility. I have health issues, and am the younger daughter so I would be a nun as any midwife noting my symptoms would have told my mother that I would not be a good breeder, but being nearsighted and very intelligent I would make a great nun. Unfortunately being 500 years ago, and mostly british, I would be in one of the convents destroyed by Henry Tudor… which would suck for me.
mmm, 1510? I’d guess I could be a cobbler, a leatherworker, a pewterer, a tailor or an armourer (all skills I have), but brewer, cook or better yet, pieman would suit me best.
If I could disguise my gender, probably some kind of scribe or similar.
If not, probably a nun. I’m not religious, but I’d rather be a nun than have to marry somebody I didn’t love and churn out kids (or even marry somebody I did love and churn out kids!) So I’d probably fake the religious part and make for the nunnery.
Maybe I could get a job (as a nun) teaching the local lord’s kids or something. I’m not wild about kids but with the limited pleasant job opportunities available during that time period, I would enjoy the teaching part.
You raise a very interesting point - our view of that period is skewed because of what we have that has survived. Peasants didn’t write about themselves because they didn’t write. Writing was restricted to the upper classes and the church. We don’t have any precise data on exactly how many people came from the peasantry to work in the church. Certainly, the good jobs in the church went to the nobility. There’s a lot less certainty about whether peasants who were talented people went to waste…
However, many of the jobs people have mentioned might have been peasants, depending on the sense in which you mean the job title. ‘Peasant’ wasn’t so much of a job description as an indicator of socio-economic status. If by ‘farmer’, you mean the guy who owns the land and decides what to plant when, that position was pretty rare, and tended to be called ‘Liege Lord’. If by ‘farmer’ you mean the guy who shoveled the shit into a wagon and spread it over the fields by hand in exchange for food and a bed, there was quite a demand for your services. If, by ‘carpenter’ you mean the equivalent of today’s General Contractor, you’d probably have been called Master Builder or Master Carpenter and there wouldn’t be very many of you. If, by ‘carpenter’, you mean the guy who hauls a bunch of stone from the quarry and lifts it up the scaffold in exchange for ‘the protection of your Lord’, there’d have been quite a few of you.
The other nit I want to pick is this - the Dope isn’t a typical demographic. We are all above average drivers, our kids are beautiful geniuses… There’s a danger when applying ‘numbers’ to history - individuals behave differently. I don’t fit in with my 20th/21st century demographic - most of the friends I grew up with stayed on their farms. Why should I assume I would fit in with the numbers historically when I don’t fit in with the numbers now? Yes, I grant you we have much more social, economic and geographical mobility; that isn’t to say they had absolutely none.
