How much land for new Noble ?

[Rassilon]

Greetings All,

Just today I picked up Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe.
Firstly, I highly recommend it !
Secondly, I have destroyed my afternoon by using the "Manors" section to work out how some recently acquired land will function for my character - but I need some help:

The characters in the campaign were recently En-nobled, becoming Barons, and were each granted a share of land from a powerful lord exposed and deposed.

The DM isn't really interested in the details from there - so how much land does a Baron rule ? In MMS: WE terms, how many manors is a Baron (an extremly rich and powerful figure, even if the lowest of the 'Noble' class) likley to govern ?

Any informed opinions will do . . .

 

[S'mon]

IRL and in-game, it will depend on the quality of the land - a baron in a rich area will need far less land to support his castle than a baron of poor highland terrain. And in medieval terms, it's all about the castle. A typical figure would be 5-12 miles radius around his castle, or 25-150 square miles, and a population of about 2-3,000. Of course some historical barons had far more, but this is a typical baseline.

 

[S'mon]

I use the following for domain populations - rural population density will typically be between 10 (poor highlands) & 100 (rich farmland) per square mile, tax income between 2sp and 10sp/person/month.

Manor (Landed Knight, Baron's Reeve, Baronet): 100-1,000
Barony: 1,000-10,000
County (Count, Earl, Shire Reeve/Sheriff): 10,000-100,000
Duchy (Duke): 100,000-1 million
Grand Duchy, Kingdom: 1 million-10 million
Empire, Great Kingdom: 10 million+

 

[Rassilon]

Interesting, and thankyou for your replies S'mon.

Using the information in your first post, I calculated that the property was about 28 square miles, with a 1 villiage, 2 hamlets, and 8 thorps, total population 1440.

However given that the land was reasonably close to the capital, and well established, it seems that 28 sq. mile should have a higher population - a little over 2000. Your second post supports my feeling - I might add another hamlet + thorp. And a Huge Keep

Cheers,

Rassilon.

 

[S'mon]

Interesting, and thankyou for your replies S'mon.

Using the information in your first post, I calculated that the property was about 28 square miles, with a 1 villiage, 2 hamlets, and 8 thorps, total population 1440.

However given that the land was reasonably close to the capital, and well established, it seems that 28 sq. mile should have a higher population - a little over 2000. Your second post supports my feeling - I might add another hamlet + thorp. And a Huge Keep

Cheers,

Rassilon.

Glad to help. I'd put your base population up to say 1500 to account for farms outside villages, woodcutters, etc - the smattering of folks not living in settlements with a population of at least 20. Land fairly close to a capital city might have population around 50-100/square mile, depending on quality of farmland - if your capital is Inverness (highland Scotland) it'll be much lower than near London or Paris (maybe 150+).

BTW although I imply that a feudal baron in a poor, sparsely populated area will rule a larger domain, in medieval Scotland there were (and still are) far more Lords/Lairds than there were/are Barons in England, despite England having (then) about 3 times the population. AFAIK the big difference was that while England was feudal, with a small ruling warrior caste, Scotland was still to a large extent tribal - the Laird of a highland clan didn't have to maintain a squadron of 30 chainmail-armoured Knights like an English baron, he could get by with a few horses for his immediate family & the ability to call upon all the free men of his domain to fight for him. So in D&D terms, where the English baron has a domain of 10,000 peasants, a monthly income of 5,000gp, & 50 knights, the Scottish laid has a domain of 1,000 clansmen (inc serfs & slaves) and income only 200gp/month, but he can call upon 100 kilted highland warriors... the English baron will still win, but it'll be a fine battle.

 

[S'mon]

Do of course refer to the brilliant http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm - it takes medieval France (pop 105/sq m)as the base, which IMO gives populations a little on the high side, but still extremely useful. When I run the generator I take references to sq km as sq miles, this gives the right sort of figures for my campaign.

 

[diaglo]

In 1edADnD terms... 1 hex.

 

[S'mon]

In 1edADnD terms... 1 hex.

Which is a 12 or 15 mile radius. The important thing is your patrol has to be able to get to the border & back in 1 day!

 

[gizmo33]

Page 96 says gentry own at least one manor, nobles own at least 10, and "great landowners" at least 40. Number of manors is the population divided by 450. From what I can tell though, there's no direct correlation between a noble title and number of manors. I think it would be possible that a king would require military service at some level in order to hold a title (example - all Barons in the Kingdom must provide 10 fully equipped knights and their followers when called upon.)

"Baron" is a title that I see as being at the bottom end of the nobility. I can't think of a noble title that doesn't outrank Baron. Perhaps a "banneret knight" - though I think MMS would class them as gentry.

I don't know how far you can really get without the DMs input. It's really a question of how many manors the deposed lord owned - because those are what is distributed to the PCs. It's also usually the DMs call on how many towns are in the area - it's all covered under Chapter 8. You can think of a manor, not as a physical locations, but as a grouping of villages and whatnot that total 450 persons. Think of it as an economic unit that is designed to support a knight and his equipment. It doesn't matter what the population density is, although obvioulsy 450 persons would be scattered over a wider area in borderlands.

 

[S'mon]

"Baron" was the baseline noble title in England following the Norman conquest. Other titles developed later, I think it was Henry VIII invented the "Baronet" to make money by granting it to gentry for loads of cash - in order of precedence it's below baron, equivalent to a knight, but heritable. Note that IRL you could be a Baron and rule a huge demesne (in England, actually a lot of little demesnes - the English kings didn't approve of large coterminous holdings).

450 peasants I think would support a late-medieval knight in platemail (not full plate) armour, plus his Lance of 3-5 light troops. about 1/200 is right for high medieval I reckon, but will vary depending on how wealthy the area is.