He did not. While social mobility was present, it was far slower than today.

This is Adenulf, he is a peasant. But he is smart and also a great worker. Along with his wife Mildregard he decides to work really hard, gets himself a weaving loom and with the help from his wife and two daughters (who spin the yarn) he weaves enough good cloth to pay for a basic education for his two sons.

His younger son, Thomas, ends up being admitted as a monk in a monastery, and as he is educated and smart, makes his way up to abbot. As an abbot, he decides to offer his older brother Martin, who is also educated and a hard worker, and his family a piece of land where they will be farmers, not peasants, having to pay a rent to the monastery.

Godwin Martinson, Martin’s son, is also educated, as Thomas took him in to the convent’s school for free, receives a good loan from his father and decides to set up a wool dying shop. He hires the best dyer, buys white unfulled cloth, gets is fulled and dyed, and then sells it to the burgiers. After a few years he is able to have a beautiful stone house built in the nearby city.

Godwin’s sons, Martin and Robert Stonehouse, decide to branch out into the more remunerative spices trade. While Martin keeps an eye on the wool trade, Robert travels to buy luxury dyes and spices that are hard to find closer to home. By trading pepper, nutmeg, and cloves they make a small fortune. By now the family is decidedly wealthy and well respected, to the point that the local Baron regularly invites them for dinner at his manor. This is how Martin’s son, William Stonehouse, becomes good friends with the Baron’s second son Edwin.

As the two youths are such good friends, the Baron decides to take William in and have him trained along with his son. Edwin, being the son of a Baron, becomes a knight, William is just a man-at-arms, but when the king calls for a crusade both youth decide to join in. The crusade never reaches Jerusalem, but in a battle right outside Damietta Edwin gets wounded, and William fights bitterly to save him, then carries his friend to safety to be cared for. The Baron, thankful, presses for William to knighted too, and assigns him a village with some lands.

Sir William Stonehouse’s son, Godwin, becomes a knight too. No crusades are called as it’s a peaceful period, so he is mainly part of Duke Marmaduke II retinue, and meets the Viscount Medard IV of Cloven, who has no male offspring. But he has two daughters, and Viscount Medard offers his oldest Edgarda to Godwin.

They marry and their oldest son Medard V Stonehouse of Cloven is chosen as heir by the grandfather.

And this is how a Medieval peasant’s grand-grand-grandson would sometimes become a lord.