Estate Sales

 In the US it is common to see ads for estate sales, where the older generation has died (or gone into a Home) and the younger generation is selling everything off: the recliner chair, the china, some old jewelry, miscellaneous vinyl records from the '40s or '50s, the canning jars, a lawn tractor, a collection of miniature toy cars.

They didn't have estate sales in the Middle Ages.  So, you ask, is this going to be a very short blog post?  No, actually, because the topic opens up a discussion of medieval material culture and inheritance.

One of the sharpest differences between a modern middle-class household and a medieval household, even a wealthy household, is how much Stuff we all have compared to medieval people.  Industrialization (made possible initially by an abundance of mined coal) means that material objects are far, far cheaper and more abundant now than when everything had to be made by hand, without power tools (and of course a lot of goods for sale in the US are made in parts of the world where labor is cheaper).

Medieval people had far less furniture, far less clothing, far fewer kitchen utensils, and far, far fewer books (plus of course fewer miniature toy cars or lawn tractors....).  This meant that when the older generation died (or perhaps went off to a monastery for their final time on earth) there was very little Stuff left behind.  And rather than saying, "What are we going to do with all this old Stuff?" the younger generation wanted it.

In fact a lot of people wanted it.  In a castle or manor house, the heir just took over, treating everything in the place as theirs now, furniture, tapestries, cooking and eating utensils, weapons, linens, and so on.  Old-fashioned or broken jewelry would not be sold for a few bucks just to get rid of it, but either treasured as it was or reset to look more modern.

Peasant households also had goods that everyone wanted.  If the heir was living with the parents, she or he would just take over everything (recalling that "everything" was a pretty skimpy selection once one got past the ox and the plow).  Landlords wanted those goods too, and although they would rarely just seize them from the heir, they would if there were no heir in sight.  After all, everyone could use another table or storage chest or cook pot, to say nothing of the ox and plow.  Some peasants negotiated deals with their landlords, that an heir would have a year to make an appearance before the landlord just appropriated the goods.

Who were these heirs?  Generally the child or children of the deceased (oldest sons had a certain priority, or at least they thought so, but like most legal requirements in the Middle Ages, any dispute started with a big discussion and usually ended in compromise).  Otherwise uncles and cousins  were usually next in line.  If a peasant had no obvious heirs, a landlord would just take over.  If a great noble had no heirs (or if the heir was a young girl) the crown would step in to take charge of the Stuff.

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

For more on medieval inheritance and social history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.