#town charters

[racefortheironthrone]

You mentioned that GRRM is weaker on the sociological aspects of Medieval times. Does this include the severe neglect/abuse of the lower classes? It works well to explore his theme of 'True Knighthood' and existential heroism in the books, but what could a real peasant count on his lord to actually do for them during siege or chevauchee? (Even if only in a self-interested sense of 'I need X peasants alive to work my fields and tax myself into splendor.')

As we might expect from a writer of his generation, GRRM does better with class than he does with race or gender or sexuality. He's still imperfect - one major non-noble POV in a book made up largely of noble POVs isn't exactly representative - but you do see his depiction of class inequality through the impact of the War of Five Kings on the Riverlands, the Broken Man speech about the War of Ninepenny Kings, the King's Landing riot and the Sparrow movement, etc.

At the same time, while GRRM certainly knows what town and city and guild charters are, he doesn't really show the burgher class as an active force in Westerosi politics (outside of the Antler Men) the way they should be given the degree of urbanization that's supposed to exist.

[racefortheironthrone]

Just finished reading your analysis of Bran III and I noticed you mentioned that the people of the Gift migrated South and swore fealty to Houses like the Umbers and the Mountain Clans. Was it legal to migrate and change your fealty in a feudal system? It seems to me this would be considered a betrayal.

Good question!

The answer is that it depends a lot on what period we’re talking about. Under serfdom, it was not legal to leave the plot of land the serf had been assigned to and had tenure on, not least because they owed service in labor to the lord of the manor. 

However...it is an absolute truism of legal history that if a law is passed banning something, there must be a significant number of people who had been doing the banned behavior. Serfs ran away from their land all the time, and while their feudal masters would try to hunt them down just like happened in the antebellum United States, whether they’d get caught had a lot to do with how much of a head start they got, how active the lord was in pursuing them, but most of all how far it was to the nearest town or city.

For medieval serfs, towns and cities were the great potential loophole in the feudal system, because unlike rural villages where everyone knows everyone else and strangers are really easily singled out, the anonymity of the crowd favored the runaway. With no system of identification other than the manor court rolls, it was really easy to change your name and loudly declare that you were a freeman and had always been so, and that you’ll sue if anyone claimed otherwise. (Incidentally, another thing peasants did all the time was sue their landlords to prove they weren’t serfs.) More importantly, a city with its own charter allowed the serf to claim burgher rights - usually, this involved being a resident for a bit more than a year and/or demonstrating that you owned property and/or by paying a fee - and once you had that right, you were now a free citizen of the city and no longer legally a serf.

Moreover, the nobility’s sense of upper class solidarity often didn’t fare well in the face of economic necessity: when lords needed to expand their labor force, whether because there had been a plague or a war that had left regions depopulated or because all that newly-cleared forest and fenland needed someone to work it, they often would offer various incentives to immigrants - which often included improved legal statuses as well as tax exemptions and cheap rents. 

In that scenario, it behooved the lord to accept their new tenants’ word that they were totally free peasants and to get very aggro with any other lord who showed up trying to recover their runaway serfs, because how dare you challenge my right to offer free tenancy to anyone I want, and so on.

[racefortheironthrone]

What is the difference between a city charter and a town charter? What are the advantages each brings? Also how does a charter affect the people and how would a Lord Paramount or the King grant a charter? Does someone ask for one or does the Lord/King decide where the new city or town will be built and how?

City charters offer more extensive rights than town charters (and generally speaking, if a city had a city charter, it would include the rights of a town charter but not vice-versa). So for example, a town charter might provide borough rights (i.e, its inhabitants are burghers not peasants) and some measure of self-government but only a city charter would give you the staple or storage right (which was necessary to conduct international trade). a town charter might give you the right to hold a market but you might need a city charter to the right to establish a warehouse (which was very important for long-distance, international, and bulk trade). 

In terms of how a charter affects the residents of a town, it provided a whole host of legal, political, and economic opportunities that could change one’s status enormously. Being a burgher meant that you not only had the right to live in the town, but that you were a free person under the law and not a serf. Living in a chartered town or city probably meant that there were guilds you could join and become a member of, and it definitely meant access to markets and trade and occupations that could not be accessed outside of that town/city. It might mean that there was a city government that you could vote for or run for office in if you got wealthy enough. 

While there are cases of charters being granted ahead of construction - often as a means of enticing people to move to a new (and therefore risky) settlement - usually, the settlement would predate the charter. The way it normally worked is that you had a settlement of people who would petition the king or overlord for a charter, the charter would be written out and sealed (as we see above), and there would be a big ceremony where the king/overlord would present the charter to the city government, after which the city would now exist as a legal corporation.