What did a medieval foot soldier earn?
2 pennies a day, every day of the campaign.
About $730 a month in today's gold.
A month of that pay weighs about as much as 6 paperclips in gold.
A spear, an iron hat and 2 pennies a day while the war lasts. Plus whatever you loot in France.
Where the money came from
Early in 1346 the old duty of every Englishman of military age to defend the country was stretched to service overseas, and up to a thousand convicted felons joined that year's army on the promise of a pardon. At Crécy in August the spearmen stood in ranks just behind the men-at-arms, who fought on foot. When the French charges were beaten off, English foot soldiers went forward to knife the wounded, loot the bodies and gather arrows. Pay was often late: on the march through Normandy some units had not had their April wages, and none had been paid for the June quarter. Outside Calais the army built a camp town with two market days a week, and dysentery there killed many men. In July 1355 the crown fixed the rates for its army bound for Gascony: 2 pence a day for a pikeman, the lowest on the list, against 3 for a foot archer and 2 shillings for a knight. That autumn the Black Prince's army marched 300 miles from Bordeaux to Narbonne, burning towns and windmills, and one account says soldiers threw away looted silver to carry more gold and jewellery. On his pay alone the pikeman earned the same 2 pence a day as the Earl of Stafford's farm labourers by 1350, and a knight earned twelve times as much.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org 2 · en.wikipedia.org 3 · themcs.org · en.wikipedia.org 4
What a foot soldier's pay bought in 1350
a gallon of ale: less than a day's pay
a day of a master mason: 3 days' pay
a peasant's wool tunic: 3 weeks' pay
a year at Oxford: 3 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
a craftsman's townhouse: 4 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
Every price of 1350, with its source, is on the prices page.