In fantasy novels or roleplaying games it is very common for the characters to stay a night at an inn, hostel or tavern. But I'm curious of how it was like for real in medieval times. I'm particularly interested in Britain, but any references to other parts of northern Europe are interesting as well, like France and Germany, or eastern Europe for that matter.
I know that in Roman Britain they had, so called mansio, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansio) that were run by the Roman government and meant for roman officials, like tax collectors, to stay in on their travels to the far reaches of the Empire. Some of these even had bath houses.
But what happened after the Romans left, and we enter the so called "Dark Ages"? During Anglo-Saxon times the feudal system started to rise with Jarls and Thegn, but how much freedom of travel did people have in this period, and was there any need for travel, didn't most people have a farm to take care of and lived a mostly self-sufficient life? I guess there were markets and fairs now and then where they sold overproduce if any and that required some amount of travel.
In the Norman time after 1066, weren't most villeins bound to their village in the Manor, and only a few freemen where allowed to leave the manor and travel? So how much need was there for inns and hostels and would there be enough travelers to make it a viable business? I suppose nobles had more liberty to travel, but would they settle for an inn in a village or would they rather stay at another noble's manor house or castle?
Did this change later during the period, the middle ages spans almost 1000 years so I suppose a lot of things changed during this time? What about during the Plantagenet dynasty and the Tudor period?
After the black death and the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 I can imagine that the travel ban was not as enforced anymore, and perhaps foreign trade hade increase by now so that there were more merchants in the country, doing a lot more traveling.
In the Mediterranean world hostels seemed more common, even the Bible mentions an inn in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where a Samaritan takes a wounded traveller to an inn and leaves him there with a few coins for the innkeeper to take care of him.
But the restriction on commoners by the feudal system in northern and eastern Europe seems to have made traveling more difficult and thus lodging a rather uneconomic business, I'm I right?
