Medieval Violence
The middle ages in England were a pretty violent place viewed from a modern perspective. Even today statistically most crime is carried out by males on males under the age of 25. A study of coroners rolls from the 1340’s suggests a homicide rate of 120 per 100,000 of the population in Oxford. That’s incredibly high when compared to around 1 in 100,000 today. Some of the worst cities for crime in the modern world only score around 111 per 100,000.
Medieval England was predominately a young society. The average age of death was around 35, that’s skewed of course by the childhood mortality rate which was most probably as high as 25% for those under 5 years. However, the young could and did hold significant roles in authority at ages that would raise modern eyebrows.
Access to the law particularly for those in the lower levels of society could be limited. Seeking revenge because the courts were non-existent, weak of simply untrustworthy was common. It seems some disputes could be more readily settled by doing violence to each other. And willingness to fight was often deemed an appropriate way of dealing with any sort of slight. Alcohol fuelled fights as today were very common. It must be remembered that people daily drank what would be considered today excessive quantities of ale. Even though rather weak by modern standards ale was preferred over the polluted water supplies of the medieval town.
As perpetrators, victims or simply witnesses, people from the lowest to the highest ranks of medieval society experienced violence as an ever-present part of daily life.