You also know that there are other people, mean people, who live on the hill right next to yours. 

You have never actually seen these people, but you have heard about them. You have heard that the people who live on the other hill burn down houses just for the fun of it. They would burn down yours if they knew where you lived.

You are really afraid of the people who live on the other side of the hill. You do not want to travel past them. Instead, you stay home where things are pleasant. You make your own shoes. You bake your own bread. You live among people you have known all your life. You never travel anywhere because to do so you would have to pass the mean people who live on the other side of the hill, and that would be too scary. 

One person in your community is the leader. He is a warrior. He has weapons. You did not know this person all your life. He is not from your community. He showed up one day with some men with weapons. Pretty soon, he had taken on the job of protecting all the people on your hill. He promised that if trouble came, if the mean people who lived on the other side of the hill came and tried to burn down your house, he would protect you. You believe him. He has weapons. He knows other people with weapons. You agree that if he will protect you, you and all the other good people who live on your hill will promise to work together to grow the crops, tend the livestock, bake the bread, sew the clothes, make the tools, and do the work. That is your job. 

In Medieval Europe, that's what the common people believed for a very long time. They lived on their hill or in their valley. They never went anywhere. They made everything they used. They grew all their food. They worked very hard and gave a great deal of what they produced to the lord of the manor. In exchange, the lord of the manor, who lived in the best house and did none of the work, promised to protect them. In these violent times, that was a really important promise. The people did not believe the lord would live very long anyway, going off to war all the time they way he did, but better him than them. 

This was called the Manorial System. It was the smallest unit of feudal government. 

Although this sounds as if peasants in the Middle Ages were very foolish to believe such tales, they weren't all foolish tales. Not all the people were mean, of course, but these were extremely violent times. 

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