Okay, so I'm about as far into medieval village research as Dante Alighieri was in his trip to Hell. I need to string a few loose ends together.
1.) Medieval open field system: I know serfs were granted a house complete with crofts, and tofts, which held both food and livestock for the serf's family. Were they given extra acres to work for themselves and the demense was a seperate field, or were the neatly divided rows of farmland that show up in the example maps all part of the lord's demense?
2.) There were serf and freemen. Serfs lived in villages inside longhouses and recieved: land, animals, protection, communal government, permanent occupation. Freemen lied in cottages and received: next to nothing. So how did freemen survive? Were they the craftsmen of the village and exchanged goods for food and sold excess to merchants who traveled through during market days? Did they live out in the Commons and wild country like pioneers? Surely Fiefs didn't cover every square mileage of medieval England or France?
3.) Military. How did the King of England organize an army between 25 barons(noted in the Magna Carta) in which their baronies varied greatly in size and power. Was their military training overseen by the local Lords--who were knights? or maybe the Marshal?
4.) Was their a hierarchy of knights? According to the feudal system, if you aren't the king you are technically a vassal. So that means that Dukes were Royal Blood and personal friends to the King, Counts were relatives and personal friends of the Dukes, Barons were relatives and personal friends of the Counts, Lords were relatives and personal friends of the Barons? I'm sure small local Lords could have just been individuals who proved themselves in battle and were promoted. So could a lowly Lord's 2nd son be a squire to a Count? or a Duke? Would that elevate a knight's social ranking that he could marry into a higher family and become a Baron himself? Or did squires stay in the same social ladder as their fathers? Or were all knights just considered as one tier?
4.) So Nobility didn't like merchants. at all. How did merchants come together and grow into large cities? Most medieval cities I have researched all have castles, which is indicative of a noble presence. I figured the merchants would have settled into territory of their own after they bought it off the Lords. Did some nobles see the opportunity to massively increase their wealth by allowing merchants to consolidate in their lands? Or did merchants grow independent of Lords/Barons/Counts/Dukes/King until the nobility realized that their wealth was directly proportional to the success of cities built by guilds, and therefore decided to move in and fortify?
For 1.) I can answer from The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England by Barbara A. Hanawalt. Some peasants held land in the open fields, and some did not. The former, at least in England, were divided into virgaters (holding at least a virgate, 30 acres) and half-virgaters. The later would be cottagers, renting a house and lot with little or no additional land, and would have had to support themselves with some manner of wage labor. Although peasants didn't "own" the land, there was a fairly active market in land, or at least the right to farm it. The map you link to shows demense lands scattered all about the open fields; I don't know if this was always the case.
