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Merchants earned a position as those who worked, but their social standing was certainly much higher than that of the peasants. As the peasants toiled in the field and the lords made merry in their castles, the merchants in the middle ages were busy travelling across the Mediterranean and Europe. They went as far as Spain, England, France, Russia and Scandinavia as well as Asia. By the fourteenth century, merchants were some of the wealthiest people in society; they held influential positions in local government and their children intermarried with those of the noblemen.