Cities throughout the Medieval period functioned as civic and economic hubs and productive sites; the home of markets, merchants, specialised craftspeope and traders, and the ancillary roles that supported them. As civic centres, they were centres of religious and secular authority; hubs where the population at large could consult wider religious authority, seek legal advice or recourse and, period depending, carry out higher value trades. What you don't tend to get in cities, at least residentially, is "serfs" or tenant farmers, since in England at least, cities tended to be governed by chartered councils or 'corporations' rather than by individual landowners. There's a wide variety of sources which illustrate some of the roles various roles that you might find in a city throughout the Medieval period; three in particular that I'll look at are the 10th Century Ælfric's Colloquy, the 15th Century Book of Margery Kempe and, most importantly, the 15th Century poem London Lickpenny.

Ælfric's Colloquy is essentially a late 10th Century Duolingo, a phrasebook of sorts designed to tech English novices Latin by presenting a series of stylised conversations in Old English and then Latin. The conversations are between a teacher and his class, and various community figures they might encounter in day-to-day life. Most of the figures are those from the rural communities in which a parish priests or member of a religious house would likely find themselves but we also meet some urban figures. The 10th Century was a period of urbanisation in England, as the burghal fortifications built in the late 9th and early 10th centuries accumulated a number of legal and economic roles. Two of the figures we meet illustrate the town's role as a commercial centre: The Merchant, who

bring[s] purple cloth and silk, precious stones and gold, various sorts of clothes and dyes, wine and oil, ebony and brass, tin and brimstone, glass and like products

And The Fisherman, who sells nis wares to...

"The townsfolk. I cannot catch as many as I can sell."

Other character we might find in an urban centre include The Lawyer, The Tanner, The Salter, The Baker, The Blacksmith and The Carpenter.

The Book of Margery Kempe is the fascinating autobiography of its titular author, as dictated to a priest. Margery Kempe was a lay woman who, after a particularly severe bout of post-partum depression, claimed to see visions from, and eventually have regular communication with God, becoming somewhat of a cult figure. The daughter of an Alderman, Margery was an urban businesswoman for much of her life, and a successful one, telling of her own fondness for fashionable clothing from the city's leading seamstresses. Margery herself ran a brewery, a role in which women were often prominent. Many of Margery's anecdotes begin with her visiting cities to commune with religious authorities or, occasionally, magistrates and reeves. One story begins with her and her huband walking home from a market in York carrying cakes from the city's bakers.

London Lickpenny is a 15th Century poem that follows a poor Kentish fsrmer who visits London to seek legal recourse and then passes through the various market districts of the city. In narrative order, the various trades and crafts we encounter are; Judges of the King's Bench, legal clerks, chancery clerks, Flemish felt-workers, milliners, opticians, cooks selling "bread with ale and wine, Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine", street food vendors, fruit sellers, spice merchants, a variety of textile merchants and drapers, hawkers selling cooked fish, sheep's feet, rissoles and other street foods, a clothing merchant, a cloak-seller, meat-sellers, metalworkers (specifically a pewter pot-maker), musicians and entertainers, fences, taverners and bargemen.