It’s hard to imagine a world where paper money and coinage isn’t the most common way to pay for things. But that was the reality for most people in the Middle Ages.  The majority of your daily needs would have been met using either your own skills and labor, or acquired through the barter system. It wasn’t even gold and coinage that made the nobility wealthy, but the amount of land they held. Land that produced important resources, including crops, timber, quarries, mines, livestock, or game for hunting. It might also include vital waterways, towns, or cities.

In the feudal system that governed medieval life, the poorest classes were basically bought and sold with the land they lived and worked on—their labor was part of what made the land profitable. Everything on, or within, a noble’s lands could be taxed. For the most part, taxes weren’t paid in currency either…