Following 1000, peach and order grew. As a result, peasants began to expand their farms and villages more towards the countryside. The earliest merchants were peddlers who went from village to village sellign their goods. As the demand for goods increased, particularly for the gems, silks, and other luxuries from Genoa and Venice, the ports of Italy that traded with the East, the peddlers became more familiar with complex issues of trade, commerce, accounting, and contracts. The English, Belgians, Germans, and Dutch took their coal, timber, wood, iron, copper, and lead to the south and came back with luxury items such as wine and olive oil.
There were few towns in Medieval England and those that existed were very small by our standards. Most people in Medieval England were village peasants but religious centres did attract people and many developed into towns or cities.
Life in the middle ages was actually very difficult and un-enjoyable. There was no electricity whatsoever. Cleanliness was generally an afterthought and people did not bathe on a regular basis. Because of the lack of cleanliness, diseases such as the black death and the bubonic plague ran rampant through societies. Life was typically very rusic in those ages. The life expectancy of the average person was generally not past the age of 40, especially for women as many women tended to die during and after child birth due to lack of medical technology
Medieval cities were extremely small by our standards. London had only 10,000-100,000 residents during the medieval period. Cities were geographically small with the average about 1 square mile with 300,000 inhabitants. The streets were exceedingly narrow and unpaved; mud was common. Sometimes the main street and market square were cobblestoned. Cities and larger towns were usually surrounded by a wall, which enhanced the separation between urban and rural, but the fields frequently came up to the wall. City dwellers would help rural people who came to the city for market.