No, Henry is not "slow about that". In the Middle Ages only nobles and scribes were able to read. Henry is a commoner, a peasant, and as such had no access to learn how to read.,(reply>), @Xia Sheng  I understand there aren’t terms of copy paper laying around in Medieval Europe, my point was there aren’t going to be millions of pieces of personal correspondence available from the time period due to the nature of the material that it would have been written on. We weren’t discussing books.,(reply>), ​@Colt James Paper? There was literally no paper during the Middle Ages in Europe, until around 1400 becoming relatively available. All books, more precisely, "codices", were hand-written on parchment. Therefore, books were rare and very expensive, and most people cannot afford to learn how to read. Massive printing press was relatively available around 1450. Though the period still could be defined as the Middle Ages, it is not the common impression of the concept. <br><br>Nowadays, there are lots of monographs about this topic, such as, a book about the codices by the Oxford University Press. Literacy rates during the Middle Ages is very low, it is a solid conclusion. By the way, depending on how to define literacy, even today, there are probably millions of American adults who can not read these comments fluently. In case of evidences needed, U.S. Department of Education provides survey results and data.,(reply>), @MrSt it’s pretty safe to assume letters were written on paper, which is something that would biodegrade very quickly. I doubt people were storing any large amount of letters written by common people in a proper place, so there probably isn’t a large proportion of all the letters written at the time that survive. Who is to say to that common folk didn’t teach their own children and others in their community how to read and or write without a schoolhouse? I think it’s not safe to assume at all that schools were prevalent in history like they are today.,(reply>), @Barokai Rein What evidence? If they wrote letters to each other, then a huge amount of these letters should have remained. But they are not! There should have been a huge number of schools, which also did not exist. Some people are still ignorant ...,(reply>), @Barokai Rein Literacy rates during the Middle Ages are estimated at &lt;25% at best. There is no proof that it was "common practice" for peasants to write letters, there are just some that exist. LMAO just read your other comment about learning to read in an afternoon, you have zero credibility at all BAHAHAHAHA.