Interview a Lord Questions & Study Guide
1.
What is a Lord? What is a Lady?
 Lords and ladies are really nobles who are wealthy men or women.
 A lord is a man who was given a large fief of land by a king in exchange for his
loyalty to the monarchy. A lady is a woman married to a lord.
 A lord might have been an excellent knight or vassal to before becoming a lord
of a manor.
2.
How does one become a Lord? How do Lords obtain their wealth and
status during
the Middle Ages?
 Monarch/King gives me a large fief of land, or a manor, to manage for him.
 I then give smaller fiefs to my vassals to help me oversee the large estate.
3.
Where do you rank in Feudalism?
 I serve the king, so I am under his rule.
 I hire out vassals/knights so they are under my control.
4.
What is your relationship to your King?
 I am similar to a business man the King employs. In a sense, he owns me.
 I advise him in decision making, if he asks me for advice.
 I also help the king in time or war and battles (feudal contract); I might bring my
vassals/knights to help fight for the king.
 If the king comes for a visit, I must house and feed him and his many soldiers
(as many as 100 mouths to feed and shelter to provide for) at no cost to themterrible financial burdens! Lavish entertainment was expected as well.
5.
What are some of your responsibilities as a Lord of a manor?
 Lords are professional fighters. Their function was to protect people of the
manor, the king, and the church.
 We are also to create and enforce laws.
 If the king thought the lord was doing a bad job then he could take back the fief
and fire the lord.
 Lords were seen as mini-kings of their manor.
6.
7.
Where do you live mainly?
 I liked living on a rich manor house before the time of castles, but now I live in a
cold huge castle.
 Castles are secure, independent, fortified stone structures which are key to
controlling lots of territory.
 Within the castle, was a building called the Keep, where the nobleman and his
family lived.
What is castle life like?
It is a life of coldness, dampness, and bone chilling air.
The good thing about a castle is that it could survive up to 6months of invaders
once boarded up properly- stockpile of supplies and food.
 We try to make our castle inviting by hanging up tapestries for decoration, plus
they help keep out the air drafts.


8.
How are your children educated compared to serf children? When your
children grow up, what types of employment opportunities will they have?
 Noble children were also taught basic manners and perhaps a bit of reading,
writing, and dancing by their parents or tutors.
 At the age of about 7, boys were sent to another lord's castle to begin their
training as a knight.
 If a boy was physically weak and unfit to become a knight, he was sent to the
monastery to become a scholar or a monk.
 Girls were also sent to other castles, were they learned how to manage a
household, care for children, weave, sew, play instruments, dance, sing, and
other skills required of a marriageable young lady.
 Girls could become nuns- nuns had more freedom than ladies.
9.
What do you do for entertainment?
Hunting of course. We have the most free time of any class during the Middle
Ages.
 Lords kept the forests for themselves, making it illegal for any common person
to hunt in the forest. Only lords were permitted by law to kill deer, wild boar,
deer, and other animals.
 A typical hunting party included noblewomen as well, unless the prey was the
dangerous wild boar. Hunting dogs also made up part of the hunting party.
These dogs were trained to find and run down prey.
 Falconry was also a popular sport and each castle had a falconer whose job
was to capture, train, and care for hawks as if they were human beings.
 Tournaments were another popular event during the Middle Ages. At
tournaments we lords gather our knights who will compete against each other
for entertainment purposes. Aged or older knights acted as judges, awarding
prizes to the winners.
 Other outdoor sports included playing with a ball and stick, broad jumping,
archery (bow and arrow.)
 Lords also gambled with dice, played chess, and played checkers.

10.
How did you meet your husband/wife?
 I met him the day we married. Others meet their spouse one or two times
before marrying. (Women were to have arranged marriages, they have no say
in who they would marry.)
 Once the wedding was over, married life began. It was undoubtedly awkward
for both the husband and the wife for a time until they got to know each other
better.
 Mutual friendship and respect eventually developed among most married
people and sometimes the partners also grew to love each other.
11.
Why were spices so important during this time?
 The food would have been meat, bread, and vegetables seasoned with salt,
pepper, and other spices imported from the Far East. To help disguise the
taste of salted or rotten meat and dried vegetables, food was heavily seasoned
and mashed together.
 A noble’s chef would combine foods with spices to create wonderful tasting
concoctions for their wealthy masters.

Chefs also cooked for the great feasts that nobles held for their friends,
relatives, neighbors, or for the King/Queen and his/her men.
12.
What are your (or your wife’s responsibilities) as a lady during the middle
ages?
 A wife’s main duty was to give birth, raise healthy children, and take care of the
household.
 Birth and infancy were the most dangerous stages of life for people in the
Middle Ages. Records from the time period suggest that approximately 20% of
women died during childbirth.
 She also tended to the sick people on the manor and helped in teaching the
young ladies of manors how to be a good lady, wife, and mother.
 The man was the head of the household in the Middle Ages and the wife was
legally his property, who he had complete control over all of his wife's
belongings and any other property that was owned by the family. The husband
had the final say in all matters. However, many husbands asked for and
heeded the advice of their wives.
 Often, the husband would often be gone on business trips or away at war for a
good portion of the time, leaving the wife in charge of the household. In this
way, women gained a previously unheard of amount of freedom.
13. What types of clothes do you wear compared to the lesser people on a
manor?
 Brighter colors (scarlet red and green), better materials, and longer jacket
length were signs of greater wealth in the Middle Ages.
 Wealthy people wore clothing made of silk, velvet, and a heavy cloth called
damask. Fur was used for linings and trimmings.
 Clothes became a status symbol towards the end of the middle ages. The
wealthy nobles didn’t want commoners to dress like them, so they created laws
that forbade peasants to wear certain colors or expensive clothes. Peasants
would generally not been able to break the law, because they couldn’t afford
anything too expensive.