Yes, very. It took a farm labourer 60 years to earn the gold of one month here. Rung 16 of 20 on the men's ladder of 1350. At the bottom stands the beggar, at the top the king.

Where did an earl live?

Home: Warwick Castle, a great earl's fortress. Warwick Castle, refortified for you with a new gatehouse and two great towers vaulted in stone on every floor, a dungeon under one of them, paid for, they say, with French ransoms.

What did an earl earn a day and a year?

About 1,500 pounds a year from land; about 4 pounds a day on average. The record: About £1,500 a year from land; £1,000 was the least an earl lived on, and the richest four had over £4,000, 1330.

What could an earl buy?

A year's food for one adult: less than a day's pay; a knight's full armour: 4 days' pay; a warhorse: 3 weeks' pay; Harlech Castle: 5 years' pay, more than a whole year of it; the ransom of the King of France: 330 years' pay, more than a whole year of it.

What is an earl's pay worth today?

About ⁦$370,000⁩ a month in today's gold. A month of that pay weighs about as much as 3 litres of water in gold. How a wage in pennies becomes grams of gold at today's price is set out, with every source, on the workings page.

What did a medieval earl earn?

About 1,500 pounds a year from land.

About $370,000 a month in today's gold.

A month of that pay weighs about as much as 3 litres of water in gold.

Fifty-odd families in the whole kingdom earned this much. One of them took in 11,000 pounds.

Home: Warwick Castle, a great earl's fortress. Warwick Castle, refortified for you with a new gatehouse and two great towers vaulted in stone on every floor, a dungeon under one of them, paid for, they say, with French ransoms. Source

Where the money came from

Under Edward III there were never more than about a dozen earls and dukes at any one time. An earl lived on land. On 16 March 1337 Edward III made six earls in one day, among them his friend William Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, who was granted land and rents worth 1,000 marks a year to support the title. The grants of that year show that about £1,000 a year was the least an earl could live on, while £4,000 put a lord among the richest in England. War brought more. After 1341 great lords often signed contracts with the crown to bring a set number of soldiers, and the king's treasury promised to meet all their costs. In 1348 and 1353 the king promised the Earls of Warwick and Stafford 1,000 marks a year each, if each stood ready to serve with at least a hundred men-at-arms. The richest prize was a prisoner: Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, took the Archbishop of Sens at Poitiers and ransomed him for £8,000. Under Thomas, Warwick Castle gained a new gatehouse and two towers, Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower. In the army an earl drew 6 shillings and 8 pence a day, a knight 2 shillings and a pikeman 2 pence: the earl earned more than three times the knight and forty times the pikeman.

Sources: erenow.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org 2 · en.wikipedia.org 3 · themcs.org