Medieval Accounting Memoranda from Norwich Cathedral Priory

Harmony Dewez, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Pensionnaire à la Fondation Thiers H. Dewez, "Medieval Accounting Memoranda from Norwich Cathedral Priory", Thirteenth-Century England XIV. Proceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2011, Woodbridge, Boydell, 2013, p. 27-42. At the fourth council of Lateran, Innocent III ordered that the previously independent houses of Benedictine monks throughout Christendom be grouped and organized into provinces with triennial chapters, a measure which was successfully applied in England. 1 When the first general chapter of the new Benedictine province of Canterbury met at Oxford in 1218-19, one of its clauses stipulated that obedientiariesmonks holding administrative offices within the monasteryshould render accounts to the head of the house and this obligation was repeated at every general chapter. 2 Monasteries at the time were often in debt and such accounts served, amongst other things, to establish the 'state of the monastery' (status monasterii or status domus), a notion that had a financial significance as well as a moral and disciplinary one. 3 As a feature of the monastic reform of the thirteenth century, which touched not only the Benedictine monks but also nuns, regular canons and canonesses, the development of obedientiaries' accounts aimed to fight debt as well as proprietas, the unauthorized possession of goods by monks. 4 Even before Lateran IV, the importance of imposing account-rendering as part of the papal reform of religious houses appeared clearly in some legatine visitations, such as the visitation of St Mary's, York, by John of Ferentino in 1206. 5 Aside from the theoretically triennial frame of the Benedictine chapters and the irregular legatine visitations, archbishops and bishops also played a role in the enforcement of the rendition of obedientiaries' accounts. To quote Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln (1280-1299), in a letter to the prioress of St Michael's, Stamford, following his visit to her house: Vostre acunt ne lessez mie qe il ne seit oi pur sauer certeinete de vostre estat ('Your account you shall not dismiss that it be heard/audited, to know your state with certainty'). 6 It is all the more surprising that such insistence 2/19 within ecclesiastical hierarchy on the financial health of monastic houses did not lead to more injunctions regarding manorial accounts, injunctions which are non-existent in statutes and rare in visitation records. In fighting monastic debt, the Church as an institution rarely officially suggested optimizing existing income, for example through better auditing of manorial officers. 7 Rather, it focused on financial information and the solutions it offered were mostly about reducing or limiting expenses and ensuring they were made in the community's best interest. 8 This is probably why the spreading of manorial accounts was not an ecclesiastical phenomenon but a seigniorial one, and it does not mean that monks were alien to developments in manorial accounting and husbandryonly that this seems to have taken place outside the normative context of monastic reform imposed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This brings us to the place of didactic literature on manorial accounting in monastic manuscripts. Dorothea Oschinsky, the authority on medieval accounting treatises, developed the idea that such memoranda were more useful on small lordships than on larger and monastic ones, because in the latter clerks could be trained as interns. 9 This, she adds, did not prevent treatises from being copied in monastic registers, either out of intellectual interest, or because a particular monk had served as an officer on a lay estate, or had brought it back from his studies in Oxford, even though the accounting system of the monastery did not always match the one described in the treatise. One such treatise can be found in the fourteenth-century register of the chamberlain of Norwich Cathedral Priory and it is this document that shall now be studied, as an example of accounting treatise in a monastic context. 10 This Norwich treatise could very well have escaped archival preservation. It was originally copied on a free quire of four double-pages of parchmenta quaternionand only later was this quire bound into the chamberlain's register, at or near the end. 11 Such unbound quires were very common, but had a low survival rate. A fourteenth-century partial inventory of the archives of Ramsey Abbeyprobably dating back to the 1320skeeps the record of many now lost quaternions, one of which a doctrina de compoto, probably dealing with Godfrey of Crowland, 1299-1321 (Peterborough, 2001), p. 84 n. 82 (16th of May 1298). 7 Though it did insist on recovering lost properties and preventing the alienation of assets. (Cambridge, 1943); id., 'The Regimen Scaccarii in English Monasteries ', TRHS, 4th ser., 24 (1942), pp. 73-94. 9 D. Oschinsky, ed., Walter of Henley andOther Treatises on Estate Management andAccounting (Oxford, 1971), p. 233. 10 DCN 40/6. All DCN references (Dean and Chapter of Norwich) are from the Norfolk Record Office (NRO). 11 DCN 40/6, fols 78r-79v. The quaternion includes fols 78-81. It was bound at the end of the chamberlain's register, after a blank page and just before the last quire. The three texts are of the same late-thirteenth-century or earlyfourteenth-century handwriting and have the same ruling. They are followed by a three-page copy of the Assize of Bread and Ale and a three-page ready-reckoner in a later handwriting. The three memoranda were probably copied on a free quire and maybe used in that form before being bound into the chamberlain's register, then being completed with the ready-reckoner. chronology or astronomy rather than accounting. 12 The Norwich document presents itself as a set of three texts dealing with accounting, copied by the same hand. The first text is a list of various kinds of income, the second a list of manorial expenses and the third is a specimen manorial account. For convenience, these texts shall be referred to as A, B and C. The most interesting feature of these three texts, showing how didactic literature on accounting circulated within monastic circles, is that a very large proportion of their content has been borrowed and rearranged from another document: a list of items of manorial receipts and expenses copied in the White Book of Bury St Edmunds. 13 The second point that should be made about this document is that the specimen account is a fake: it presents itself as a 1233 partial account for the Winchester manor of Taunton, but its content is very much in contradiction with this and resembles rather the style of later manorial accounts. This raises questions regarding the genre of accounting treatises, their circulation between monastic communities and their use.

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Text A is a list of items of monetary income. Its last line invites the accountant to list all items from which money is received: et sic interrogandum, scilicet de omnibus unde argentum. It features ginger, zedoarya kind of gingernutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, swords and arrows, various nuts, peacock feathers, gloves and other such items. The fact that it relates to rents rather than manors, as is the case for texts B and C, would be coherent in a monastic context, as many obedientiaries held both kinds of income. The content of the list, however, is quite far from the reality of obedientiary income, except maybe gloves which can be found as rents from certain tenements. 14 Spices, and even weapons on some occasions, are more likely to be found as expenses than as receipts in the chamberlain's accounts, and overall this text does not relate to a monastic context. 15 Text B is a list of various expenses which are necessary on an agricultural estate. It is relatively complete in describing all the different kinds of expenses which were likely to have arisen at some point or another on a manor. They are set in a specific order beginning with all the expenses incurred for the cultivation of cereals: metal for ploughs and tools, draught animals, various objects and operations, cereals bought, repairing of granges and stables for oxen and payments for servants.

12 W. H. Hart, P. A. Lyons, eds, Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, vol. 1 (London, 1884) Customary payments such as Peter's Pence are mentioned, as well as the expenses for sheep, cows, pigs and mills. The last entries are various payments and wages for manorial servants, the reeve, the steward, the lord's servant and the accountants. All the expenses are summed up, followed by the liveries to the chamberlain and then the sum of all expenses and liveries together. Liveries in money were usually paid by the manorial officer to the main seigniorial receiver, during the year and at the audit. In most Norwich accounts, the entry liberacio denariorum is the last or the penultimate heading (before the harvest expenses) and many accounts use the expression summa omnium expensarum et liberacionum or omnium expensarum et pacacionum showing explicitly the separation between the two. However, there never is a separate sum for expenses before liveries. On the whole, text B is an orderly presentation of items which, at Norwich Cathedral Priory, are normally split under the different headings for minuti, harvest, cereals and stock, threshing and winnowing, commodum, sheep, dairy, salaries, allowances, buildings and money liveries and thus it would not have provided guidance for the writing of an account. It could have served someone in need of a basic knowledge on manorial expenses, for example someone in an auditing commission.

This could have been the chamberlain himself, as he held two manors, Arminghall and Lakenham.

Many of these items, however, do not relate to the manors of Norwich Cathedral Priory: Peter's pence, the mention of lords of the fiefs, the payment of tithes, the parks, and even the payment of accountants, as their manorial accounts were drawn by scribes of the monastery. This, together with the items of text A, suggests that the memoranda were not produced by or for the monks; they are more likely to have a lay origin, which is consistent with Oschinsky's observations on the copy of lay treatises by monastic clerks.

Text C presents itself as a summary from a specimen account with occasional explanations.

The specimen account, as the title lets us know, is a partial account from the 31st of January 1233 to Michaelmas of the same year. 16 It is clearly identified as an account for the manor of Taunton, belonging to the bishop of Winchester. 17 The Winchester pipe roll for 1232-33, the 28th year of the pontificate of Peter des Roches, is still extant and the comparison with the pipe roll is clear: there is no possibility that the Modus audiendi could have come from an account for Taunton. 18 For example, the Modus follows the Westminster form of manorial accounts, in which the arrears are included in the receipts, rather than the Winchester form where the arrears are settled before the audit of the current account. 19 Oschinsky has noted that the Westminster or Common Form of accounts was found since c.1260, which in itself would contradict the alleged date of the specimen, 5/19 but the earliest accounts for Norwich in 1256-57 already follow the Common Form. 20 The names of the reeve and bailiff do not match, nor does any entry. 21 Even allowing for the fact that the specimen account is said to be a partial account, the headings and the general information of these two documents have nothing in common: whoever created the Modus audiendi must have had some knowledge of Winchester, enough to mention the palace of Wolvesey for example, but did not copy a real Winchester account. 22 Of course, it would have been very interesting if it had really been an extract from an individual manorial account for Winchester, as these survive only from the mid fourteenth century onwards, but it is not the case. 23 This Modus audiendi shows a distorted view of the manorial account, focusing on the detail of the cereal and stock account. The money account, by contrast, has no headings apart from inde, which is rarely found in such a place in the Norwich manorial accounts. 24 The paragraph for receipts, though including most of the usual entries, is very abridged in comparison to the normal length of this section; the paragraphs of monetary expenses are limited to a short summary of the necessary expenses and the liveries. The sums in the specimen account do not add, which is quite common in accounting treatises and stresses that calculation was not the point of this memorandum. 25 The choice of the author to model his treatise on a Winchester account probably stems from the reputation of the bishopric for its accounting. To a famous reference he added the lustre of age, as in 1233 individual manorial accounts were only beginning to be preserved. Other accounting treatises claim an even higher date. One set of accounting memoranda is given the date of 6-7 Henry III (1222-23), but does not specify a manor or a lordship. 26 Another explanation for the Modus audiendi is that there had been indeed at some point a 1233 specimen account from Winchester, but that it was modified to match the evolution of manorial accounting over the following half-century.

Two repetitions and two hesitations in the spelling suggest that these three texts from the 20 Ibid. 21 In the Winchester pipe roll, the officer is named Joseph, rather than Geoffrey or Robert. The arrears are £32 1d but only £11 3s 7d in the Modus audiendi. The WPR uses reragium rather than arreragium, and the word purchas' rather than placit' et perquisit'. There is no chamberlain and no steward Humphrey in the WPR. 22 Wolvesey was the bishop's palace in Winchester. N. Holt, in his edition of the WPR for 1210-11, suggested that the bishop's exchequer was first located in Southwark before being moved to Wolvesey, but for Nicholas Vincent the bishop's exchequer was at Wolvesey from the beginning. N. Vincent, 'The Origins of the Winchester Pipe Rolls', Archives, 21/91 (1994), pp. 25-42; N. R. Holt, ed., The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1210-11 (London, 1964). 23 B. M. S. Campell, English Seigniorial Agriculture 1250-1450 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 27f. The oldest known individual manorial accounts are those dating from 1233-34 for the manor of Froyle (Hampshire), 1238-39 for St Benet at Holm and 1234-37 for the Honours of Clare and Gloucester. 24 The only manorial accounts with no headings are for 1256-57, for example DCN 60/26/1 (Monks' Grange) and DCN 60/33/1 (Sedgeford). 25 Receipts are £486 15s 6,5d, expenses £410 6s 8d and the balance in the Modus is £22 14s 10d instead of £76 8s 10,5d. This was quite frequent (D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley, p. 226). 26 MS BL Add. 8167, fols 131v-132v, quoted in N. Denholm-Young, Seignorial Adminstration in England (London, 1937), p. 121. It is dated 6-12 Henry III, but such accounts are usually annual and I believe the original date to have been distorted over time, vii becoming xii.

chamberlain's register were copied from another text or from a draft. 27 A third clue is the presence of two 'N' on either side of in bobus et affris uel stottis emptis in text B. These two 'N' are cancellation signsmeaning that the text in between should be deletedbut the clerk does not seem to have understood this and copied them neatly. Originally, the author of the text must have squeezed the 'N' in the text of the original manuscript or draft after realizing his mistake. The mistake was to include the buying of oxen and draft-horses in the list instead of accounting for them separately, as he explains further. 28 Other oddities in texts A and C also confirm that the scribe was not the author of the memoranda.

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The most interesting fact about these memoranda is that they were composed using elements from another memorandum copied in the Liber Albus of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds.29 This famous manuscript contains the customary of Bury St Edmunds edited by Dr.

Gransden as well as many memoranda on accounting and a copy of the Rules of Robert Grosseteste.30 In Thomson's description, the list belongs to a part of the manuscript which is dated c.1275, but the list itself is not dated. Dorothea Oschinsky suggests a mid-thirteenth-century hand, active in 1265.31 The date of creation of the Norwich memoranda is impossible to guess, but there are some internal clues, such as vetches and the use of summe. As shown by Pr. Campbell, vetches a legume used as fodderarrived progressively in Norfolk as an experimental crop from the 1280s and it was only in the 1320s that their cultivation began to spread in that area. 32 At Norwich Cathedral Priory, they appear in the estimations of the granges in the ninth year of prior William Claxton, for the harvest of 1334. 33 Theoretical knowledge of vetches in East Anglia may however have preceded their culture as they are already mentioned in the first Winchester Pipe rolls of 1208-9. The fact that the specimen account still uses summe is also significant, as this measure for grain capacity disappears at Norwich from the accounts of the prior's manors after 1287-88 and from the accounts of the obedientiaries' manors after 1295-96. 34 Thus, the origin of the Bury list is 27 In text B, in reparacione grangearum and in curtilagio were repeated; corebaliis and bbadis are misspellings. 28 In stauro empto distincte fiat 29 unknown, but it could have been copied around the 1270s, and the Norwich memoranda could have been composed any time before the end of the century. Here are the main extracts from the Liber Albus list which were used in text B (in bold letters, words omitted in the Norwich version): ¶ In ferro et ascero ad carucas, in ferrura stottorum uel affrorum, in stipendio fabri, ¶ in carucis et herciis cum atillio, in affris uel stottis ad carucas, in bobus ad carucas, ¶ in carris et carectis cum atillio, ¶ in saccis et pannis ad ventilandum, in cribris, sportis, beschiis et trabulis.

In ciueris, rastris et flagellis.

In seris, securibus, traciculis et tripodibus.

In ollis eneis, bacis et patellis.

In plumbis et aliis uasis. 35 ...

In ceragiis et Romepeny. ¶ In sulphure et aliis ad marescalcia ouium necessariis.

In lacte ad agnos nutriendum.

In cleis et palis ad faldas.

In ouibus lauandum et tondendum.

In constructione vel reparacione bercariarum.

In sale, linea tela et presura.

[other items, including entries regarding the construction and repair of the buildings as in William of Kirkby (1287-88) and of the first year of Henry of Lakenham (DCN 60/28/1, 2). Other manors (Hindolveston, Martham, Plumstead) still use summe the 16th year of William. From Henry of Lakenham onwards, prior's manors use quarterii. As for obedientiaries' manors, the account of the sacrist's sergeant on the manor of Eaton still uses summe in 8 Henry of Lakenham (1295-96; DCN 60/8/8), as does the chamberlain's account for Lakenham in the same year (DCN 61/10). 35 MS BL Harl. 1005, fol. 47r ¶ In liberacionibus factis camerario. 36 Although some of these entries were slightly modified, this demonstrates clearly the link between the two documents. 37 Such borrowings can also be found in text A and in text C. De pennis pavonum, de sagittis and urticis have found their way into text A. 38 A description of items belonging to the chapel (capella) and an entry armature et warnesture castrorum relate to the ornamenta capellarum, the armatura castrorum and the warnestura castrorum of text A. 39 The Norwich scribe has a tendency to misunderstand some of the words and his de warenna (the warren) is likely to come from the entry for warencia, madder. A mysterious de herbagio fullonum is probably a misunderstanding of de terra fullonumfuller's earthin the Bury list, maybe influenced by a vague knowledge of herba fullonum, soapwort. The items which are not present in the Bury list are the spices (ginger, cinnamon), nuts and gloves. In text C, the very common vocabulary of rents, cereals or animals cannot be attributed for certain to the Bury list, but some items are found in the same order or are very similar. 40 Once again, the author picked very unusual words that he or more likely the Norwich copyist didn't understand, like hastivellum, misspelt hasturellum in text C, but not in the Liber Albus, where the correct word is perfectly legible.

Another example of the copyist's unfamiliarity with things manorial is the writing of de avibus matricibus, birds, instead of de ovibus matricibus, ewes. The fact that the second paragraph of text C seems abridged from text B suggests that text C was either written at the same time as text B or transformed at the time of the copy and so, even if the Modus were an older document, it was certainly modified by the author of text A and text B. 41 That the original list of manorial items was not copied as such, but rather that some of its elements were picked and reorganized to form a completely new set of texts is especially interesting. It could actually be possible to imagine this set of memoranda not necessarily as a treatise, but as an exercise on the part of a scribe wishing to memorize elements of accounting by recreating his own memoranda from a general list of items. The logic of the Norwich memoranda is the same as in the Bury list, where items borrowed for text A are similarly under a heading for money receipts and Oschinsky notes that the elements of the Bury list are in the order in which they had to be audited, which explains why the Norwich specimen is entitled Modus audiendi compotum 36 MS BL Harl. 1005, fol. 47r 37 As examples of modifications: acero for ascero, ferramento for ferrura, cum stipendio instead of having a separate entry; the suppression of carris, carts and sportis. The bold items listed after the word seris were summed up under the expression et aliis huiusmodi minutis and the cancelled entry in bobus et affris uel stottis emptis corresponds in the Liber Albus to the entry for horses and oxen for the ploughs. 38 Fol. 46v and 47r 39 All preceding references are on fol. 45. 40 De firma fori, de firma molendini and de tholnetis, de cheuagiis, could have been copied from the Bury list. 41 The clerk may have added elements from the Bury list, for example, or modified the injunctions to fit his purpose. 9/19 manerii. 42 This, however, could only have been the original purpose of the author of the texts, not of a later copyist. The content of the texts suggests that the author of the memoranda would have had in mind a non-monastic estate. The manuscript quaternion bound in the chamberlain's register is a copy of the original memoranda by a scribe who misread or misunderstood some of the words and who probably wasn't working for the priory.

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The date of the copying of the memoranda on the free quire is difficult to determine. The handwriting is difficult to identify. It does not match with certainty any Norwich scribe.

Nevertheless, it shares some characteristics with handwritings dating of the last decade of the thirteenth century 43 and of 1319-20 44 and shares common features with the hand of the very last accounts of the last master of the cellar under Henry of Lakenham, named Richard of Lakenham (1308-10). 45 Thus, the copy could well have been made in the decades either side of 1300. How did the chamberlain get hold of this copy of the treatise? Because probably neither the Norwich memoranda nor the Bury list are of monastic origin, they could have been acquired by the two houses separately, without any communication between the monastic communities. If otherwise, there were many opportunities for the circulation of manuscripts between monks and two of these, gathering at the general Benedictine chapters and studying at Oxford, find an illustration in Norwich chamberlains. In 1295-96, that office was held by Thomas of Stocton, whom Joan Greatrex notes as having been proctor for the monks at the general Benedictine chapter of Northampton in 1297-98. 46 Of course, nothing can be said of this, but general chapters may well have been the sort of place where such documents could be exchanged between monks or promised to be sent. An alternative explanation is illustrated by Richard of Lakenham who, after a second spell as master of the cellar in 1327-28, became chamberlain and held this office for twelve years. 47 If Richard had come to possess the quire when he was first master of the cellar, in the last years of the priorate of Henry of Lakenham (1289-1310), had kept it in his archives and brought it with him 42 D. Oschinsky, ed., Walter of Henley, p. 13 no. 7. 43 For example, it can be compared to two accounts of the Chamberlain for 1291-92 and 1294-95 (DCN 1/5/1, 3), profit calculations for 1294-95 and 1300-1 (DCN 66/2, 3; DCN 40/13). 44 DCN 1/1/21 and DCN 1/7/1. 45 DCN 1/1/20, 21 (1307-9). For example, the frequent use of a certain kind of elaborate S. If most letters are quite similar, they are probably not the same handwriting. This sort of S reappears at the very end of Robert of Langley's priorate, in 1324-25, under the hand of the prior's manor rolls, and at a time (1327-28) when Richard is again master of the cellar (See for example DCN 60/26/20). 46 DCN 1/5/3. J. Greatrex, Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury, c.1066 to 1540 (Oxford, 1997). 10/19 when he became chamberlain, this could explain why the quire was bound into the chamberlain's register. Between his two terms as master of the cellar, he is also known to have gone to Oxford, another place where such a treatise could have been acquired or copied. 48 Both of these explanations could be wrong, as evidence is all but nonexistent. They illustrate, however, two possible routes of circulation of these treatises. The two houses being located in neighboring dioceses, they could also have exchanged documents directly. The many unknowns surrounding these memoranda prevent any definitive conclusion as to their origin, recipient or use. However, they add to the corpus of medieval texts on accounting. The link with the Bury list, beyond any hypotheses that can be made, can be held as a witness of the circulation and transformation of documents.

[ 63 Wolvesey. 64 The singular would be justified by the fact that even though the title gives reddunt, meaning the account is rendered by sergent and reeve, the financial responsibility in the rest of the account is usually the reeve's and the liberaciones denariorum of the last paragraph of monetary expenses mention only Robert. 65 The nominative would rather be mixtilio. 66 Siligo … et quietus: text in four columns.

  text B]In sepo, uncto ... ¶ In expensis nunciorum. ¶ In expensis senescallorum.In liberacione seruientium.In robis eorumdem. ¶ In expensis computatorum. ¶ In seruicio uel redditu debito dominis feodorum.... ¶ In elemosinis constitutis.

  8 See for example R. H. Snape, English Monastic Finances in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1926); R. A. L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory: A Study in Monastic Administration

  The Liber Albus is MS BL Harl. 1005; it is bound together with MS BL Harl. 498, the Asphall Cartulary. Cf. R. M. Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds(Woolbridge, 1980; Suffolk Records Society, 21), pp. 17-19, 142-5 n. 1293. The list is fols 45-7 and part of item 10 in Thomson's description.30 A. Gransden, ed., The Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk(London, 1973).31 D. Oschinsky, ed., Walter of Henley, p. 13, no. 7, n. 3. 32 B. M. S. Campbell, 'The Diffusion of Vetches in Medieval England', EcHR, 41/2 (May 1988), pp. 199-203. 33 DCN 66/18. 34 Amongst the last rolls of the prior's manors to use summe are two accounts for Newton dated of the 17th year of

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  NEW SECTION: EDITION OF THE MANUSCRIPT] Tantone ¶ Galfridus le Sauage seruiens et Robertus prepositus de Tantone reddunt com-/ potum suum apud Tantone die dominica proxima post festum apostolorum Symonis et Jude [30 oct. 1233]/ scilicet a die lune proxima post conuersionem sancti Pauli [31 jan. 1233] usque ad diem sancti Michaelis [29 sept. 1233] anno/ regni regis H[enrici] xviii incipiente/ De xi li' iii s' vii d' de arreragiis ultimi compoti sui; et de C iiii s'/ iii d' de redditu Annunciacionis beate Marie et de xii li' xi s' vi d' de/ termino Pasche et sic de aliis terminis; et de xl li' xx s' x den' de firma/ fori et molendini et sic de aliis redditibus; de uaccis affermatis et c'; de thol-/ netis, cheuagiis; de herbagiis uenditis; de placitis et perquisitis et c'; de bobus/ uenditis et c'; de auibus 60 matricibus uenditis et c'; de caseo uendito et c'; de porcis/ uenditis et c'; de pullis uenditis et c'; de frumento uendeto 61 , siligine uendito; de hun-/ dredo et c' et similiter de omnibus rebus uenditis et de omnibus aliis exitibus/ et receptis/ Summa totius recepti CCCC iiii Item domino Umfrido senescallo per i talliam, x li'. Senescallo H. com' per preceptum domini/ xx li' de prestito per i talliam. Item pro cultura que uocatur Bishopeswonge/ per preceptum domini xl marcas per i talliam Summa totius liberacionis CC xii li' iiii s' viii d'/ Summa summarum CCCC x li' vi s' viii d'/ Et sic debet xxii li' xiiii s' x d'/ ¶ Exitus grangearum ¶ frumentum ¶ Idem reddunt compotum de CC xiii summis frumenti/ Inde ¶ In semine, C summe; misse apud Wintoniam 62 ad furniandum contra aduentum/ episcopi, xl summe; in uenditione, l summe; in liberacionibus et donis per talliam, x summe;/ misse apud Wlueseye 63 , ix summe per talliam; in forinacione, iiii summe. Et quietus 64 / [Fol. 79r] ¶ Siligo ¶ Mixtilion' 65 ¶ Ordeum ¶ Auena ¶ Hasturellum ¶ Fabe ¶ Pise ¶ Uesce ¶ Braseum/ ¶ Drewe/ Idem reddunt compotum de omnibus istis quolibet per se/ eodem modo sicut superius de frumento, in semine, in/ uendicione, in liberacione seruiencium, in prebenda stottorum et quietus/ 66

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	De cetuuallo
	De canello/
	De nucibus mugatis/
	De minutis nucibus/
	De nucibus phillidis/
	De semine synapis/
	De urticibus in curia/
	posset euenire et postea summa/ 50
	¶	Et	sic	interrogandum	scilicet	de	omnibus	unde	argentum/
	Edition
	/	Line break in the manuscript
	¶	Original paragraph signs
	Bold Marginal heading
	'[Fol. 78r] [Text A]
	De sagittis de redditu
	De gladiis de redditu
	De pennis pauonum uenditis
	De waruesturis 49 castrorum
	De armaturis castrorum
	De ornamentis capellarum
	De herbagio fullonum
	De warenna
	De clauis gariophilis
	De cyrotecis de redditu
	De gingibere

48 D. Oschinsky, ed., Walter of Henley, p. 226; J. Greatrex, 'Monk Students from Norwich Cathedral Priory at Oxford and Cambridge, c.1300 to 1530', EHR, 106/420 (Jul. 1991)

, pp. 555-83. 49 For warnesturis. xx vi li' xv s' vii d' ob'/ Inde ¶ Inde in ferro et acero ad carucas; duobus uomeribus; ferrura stottorum cum sti-/ pendiis fabri et c'; in carucis et herciis et aliis pertinentiis ad carucas fa-/ ciendas et c'; in carris carectis; clutis; clauis; in pannis ad uentilandum;/ saccis; cribris; corbellis; bescis; trubulis; ciueris; rastallis; seris et huiusmodi mi-/ nutis; in xi summis ordei emptis ad liberacionem seruiencium; et similiter de aliis/ Summa C xviii li' ix d'/ ¶ Idem Robertus liberauit Willelmo camerario per iiii or tallias in camera, CC viii li'/ x s'. 60 For de ouibus matricibus. 61 For uendito. 14/19 ¶ 62 Winchester.

As the end of the account, at Michaelmas (29th of September), coincides with the beginning of the 18th year of Henry and Henry can only be Henry III, the year must be 1233. The account begins on the Monday after the Conversion of saint Paul, which, in 1233, is the 31st of January.

Tantone, Wintonia, Wlueseye and the mention of the bishop contribute to the identification.

Hampshire Record Office, 11M59/B1/15

D. Oschinsky, ed, Walter of Henley, p. 212 n. 1,

¶ Exitus. De frumento, siligine, ordeo sicut superius de frumento -Et quietus/ ¶ Molendinum / Caruce. Idem reddunt compotum de xxii stottis et tribus carectariis et de duobus emptis et c'/ ¶ Boues. Idem reddunt compotum de bobus, bouettis, bouiculis/ ¶ Uacce. Idem reddunt compotum de uaccis, iuuentis, iuuenculis/ Uituli. Idem reddunt compotum de uitulis mas, femellis/ Oues. Multones, oues matrices, gercie, rammis, hoggastris/ Agni. Idem reddunt compotum de uelleribus lane de exitu, pellectis, pelliculis/ Berkeria. De ouibus ut supra; de exitu agnorum; de pellibus lanutis districte; de pellettis de lana agnorum/ Dayeria. De caseo facto in yeme et in estate et de butiro, et And thus should be asked about, that is about everything from which money [may be received].

In iron and steel for ploughs; in the shoeing of plough-horses with the salary of the smith; in ploughs and harrows with the yokes of the ploughs and harrows; N. in oxen and plough-horses bought N., in a cart with yoke; in canvas for winnowing 74 , sacks, riddles and baskets; in spades, shovels, stretchers, racks, flails, bolts and other such items; in boon-work of ploughing; in Parisse and M. Goullet, eds, Lexique latin-français: Antiquité et Moyen Âge (Paris, 2006). 68 There is a confusion here as the two corresponding entries in the Bury list are de firma terre fullonumthe farm of the fullers' land or earthand de terra fullonariafuller's earth, a sort of fine earth used for fulling, but herbagium fullonum doesn't seem to make sense. The scribe may simply not have understood what fuller's earth was, or maybe he was misled, consciously or not, by the similar enough expression of herba fullonis, soapwort, which does not occur in the Liber Albus list. 69 The Bury list gives warencia, madder, which might fit better in the list. Its transformation in warenna may be a further illustration of the scribe's misunderstandings. 70 A kind of ginger. 71 De canello suggests masculine or neuter; Latham gives canella, feminine. It is probably the same word. 72 Probably the nut of Phyllis who, in Aesop's and Hyginus' Fables, was transformed into a tree commonly identified with the almond tree. 73 Nettles are urtica, ae, f. in classical latin, which would give urticis and not urticibus. 74 The word here is ventilacio because of the use of a canvas; vannacio would be used for winnowing with a basket. transporting and spreading manure; in wheat, rye, maslin 75 , barley, oats, beans, peas and flour bought; in [digging] ditches and pits around the cereal fields; in weeding the cereal fields; in harvesting, binding in sheaves, carrying and stacking cereals; in threshing and winnowing the cereals; in mowing the meadows; in making and stacking hay; in repairing the granges; in repairing the cow-sheds; in rent for ploughs and harrows; in companagium for the same; in oblation and other customary dues for the same; in salaries for the same; in wax-scot and rome-scot; in farms due to the lords of the fiefs; in building the sheep pen; in hurdles and stakes for the fold; in milk for feeding the lambs; in tallow, sulphur and mercury for sick sheep; in washing and shearing the sheep; in salt, rennet, linen cloth and other such items 76 ; in allowance for the shepherds and dairymaids; in salaries for the same; in building and repairing the cow-shed; in allowance and salaries for the cow-herds; in the tithe of the calves and chickens; in building and repairing the pigsty; in allowance and salaries for the pig-keepers; in making the larder; in rent for the farm-yard; in building and repairing the mills; in building and repairing the hall, chamber, chapel, granary, larder, stable and other buildings, hedges, walls and ditches around the court-yard; in enclosing the parks; in allowance and payments for the pig-keepers; bought stock shall be accounted for separately; in fixed alms; in allowance and robes of the servants; in quittance of the farm of the reeve; in expenses of the steward at his visit; in expenses of the servant; in expenses of the accountants; sum of expenses; in allowances made in the chamber; sum of all expenses, etc. Of £9 3s 7d of arrears from their latest account; and of 104s 3d for rents at the Annunciation of the blessed Mary and of £12 11s 6d at the term of Easter and so on at the other terms; and of £40 20s 10d of farms of the market and mill, and so on of the other rents; of cows farmed etc.; of tolls, chevage; of pasturages sold; of pleas and perquisites etc.; of oxen sold etc.; of ewes sold etc.; of cheese sold etc.; of pigs sold etc.; of chicken sold etc.; of wheat sold, rye sold; of the hundred etc. and so on of all things sold and all other issues and receipts. Sum of all receipt: £486 15s 7,5d 75 Mixture of wheat and rye grown together. 76 For making cheese.

From which

From which in iron and steel for the ploughs; two ploughshares; shoeing of stots with salaries of the smith etc.; in ploughs and harrows and other elements for making ploughs etc.; in carts and barrows; clout-nails; nails; in canvas for winnowing; sacks; riddles; baskets; spades; shovels; stretchers 77 ; rakes; bolts and such-like; in 11 sums 78 of barley bought for the allowance of servants; and similarly of other items.

Sum £118 9d

The same Robert paid to William, chamberlain, by means of four tally-sticks, in the chamber, £208 10s To lord Humphrey, steward, by means of one tally-stick, £10. To H. steward 79 , by order of the lord, £20 in loan by means of one tally-stick. As well, for the field called Bishopeswonge, by order of the lord, 40 marks by means of one tally-stick.

Sum of all payments £212 4s 8d

Sum of all sums £410 6s 8d And thus he owes £22 14s 10d Issues of the granges Wheat. They render account of 213 sums of wheat.

From which. In seed, 100 sums; sent to Winchester to be baked for the visit of the bishop, 40 sums; sold, 1 sum; in allowances and gifts by means of tally-sticks, 10 sums; sent to Wolvesey, 9 sums by means of tally-stick; in baking, 4 sums. And they are quit.

[fol. 79r] Rye, maslin, barley, oats, hastivel 80 , beans, peas, vetches, malt, dredge 81 : they also render account of all these, one at a time, in the same way as before for the wheat: in seed, in sales, in allowance to the servants, in fodder for the stots; and they are quit.

Issue. Of wheat, rye, barley as of the wheat; and they are quit.

Mill. They render account of 22 stots and three cart-horses and two bought etc. 77 Or barrows. 78 The summa is a capacity unit for cereals; it is used alternatively to the quarter (quarterius). 79 The com' must be interpreted. 80 Early-growing cereal. 81 I have not found drewa; in a cereal list it would be logical to find dredgedragetum, dragia, drencabut it could maybe also relate to draffdrasca, dracheumespecially as it neighbours with malt. Neither word is found in the Bury list.

Ploughs. [empty]

Oxen. They render account of oxen, steers and young steers.

Cows. They render account of cows, young cows and heifers.

Calves. They render account of male and female calves.

Sheep. Wethers, ewes, gimmers, rams, hoggs.

Lambs. They render account of fleeces produced 82 , pelts, thinned sheep-skins.

Sheep-pen. Of sheep as above; of the issue of lambs; of wool-fell exclusively; of pelts of lambs' wool.

Dairy. Of cheese made in winter and in summer and of butter, etc. Pigsty. Of pigs; of boars; of sows; of young sows; of male and female piglets.

Larder. Of salt; of bacon; of lard 83 ; of tallow; of offal; of the leather from cows and sheep.

From which they render account of 160 cheeses between the feast of St Augustine and the feast of St Michael. From which in tithe, twelve; in expenses for the harvest, twenty-eight; in sales, 120; and they are quit.

Stud.

Of stallions; of mares; of foals, fillies and their age; and they render account of six mares from the stud and six foals, among which three male and three female.

Poultry. Of hens and the issue of hens; of capons; of geese; of their issue; of peacocks and their issue; of swans and their issue; of cranes and their issue.

They also render account of three oxen and two cows of the woods and what remains of them.

The following things are to be written on a separate roll. This is the stock of the manor of Taunton that remains after the audit of the account by Humphrey the steward, on the Sunday after the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, which is to say twentyone stots, three cart-horses, one mare; also, fifty cows, twenty calves, among which fourteen male and six female and in the same manner of everything and what is left of it. 82 As opposed to fleeces de redditu, received as customary payment. 83 Unctum is fat; unctum and sepum or sebum might correspond to two different forms of pig fat.


Norwich Cathedral Priory

SCRIPTURALITÉ AND THE STUDY OF THE MANORIAL AND OBEDIENTIARY ACCOUNT ROLLS OF

This paper proposes a methodology for a seigniorial approach to the production of management documents at Norwich cathedral priory between 1255 and 1348 -the subject of my PhD -paying special attention to the material aspect of the parchment rolls, following the Frenchspeaking trend of scripturalité. It gives an overview of my first results regarding the functioning of the roll as a support for accounts, then goes into detailing different steps of accounting in a context of centralized writing before proposing, with the example Henry of Lakenham, a broader view of the link between the priory's administration and written production. 1 Though the French name itself was proposed by J. Morsel at the 1991 conference on cartularies at the École des Chartes. See O. Guyotjeannin, L. Morelle, M. Parisse (ed.), Les Cartulaires (Paris, 1993). 2 For good summaries on these notions, see J. Morsel, 'Ce qu'écrire veut dire au Moyen Âge... Observations préliminaires à une étude de la scripturalité médiévale', Memini. Travaux et documents de la Société d'études médiévales du Québec 4 (2000), pp. 3-43 (http://hal-paris1.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00291802/en/) and F. Menant, 'Les transformations de l'écrit documentaire entre le XII e et le XIII e siècle', in N. Coquery, F. Menant, F. Weber (ed.), Ecrire, compter, mesurer (Paris, 2006),

Introduction

I would like to begin this paper by saying that I am aware that part of what will be developed here might seem obvious to historians used to dealing with manorial accounts.

Nevertheless, there hasn't been many specific studies on the production of seigniorial documents and it seems to me that a case study involving one of the best archives for manorial and obedientiary accounts together, as well as many other kinds of documents and notably a wide range of registers, can be useful to the understanding of medieval literacy.

Scripturalité is the French concept for a general tendency over the last three or four decades to reassess the place of writing and written culture in medieval history 1 . It is associated with the German-and English-speaking concepts of Schriftlichkeit and literacy, each historiography alternatively overlapping the others or following its own path 2 . Regarding the medieval manorial accounts produced by lay and ecclesiastical lordships, a certain number of remarks can be made.

These documents have been abundantly used for economic history and some studies have developed different aspects of their organization and evolution. However, these studies involve only a few monastic houses and they consist only in articles. Moreover, the most recent of these studies This not only leaves place for a case study of the rolls of Norwich cathedral priory, but furthermore shows how necessary it is to engage in studies considering the logics of production of seigniorial documents as a whole, and not only manorial or obedientiary accounts individually5 .

Nevertheless, the concept of scripturalité can bring new insight into these last two kinds of documents. Analysing them together, in the rich series of Norwich cathedral priory between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth century, may prove a first step towards this seigniorial point of view.

I. What is scripturalité and how to use it ?

Scripturalité can't really be considered alone, as it is part of a relatively international movement which would embrace the three English-, French-and German-speaking concepts of literacy, scripturalité and Schriftlichkeit. Literacy seems more on the side of cultural history, studying the impact of written culture on medieval society. Michael Clanchy's From Memory to Written Record is of course a cornerstone reference, where he analyses the growing use of writing throughout the society in relation to the development of a centralized state6 . Subsequent series of studies in the 1980's and 1990's have explored literacy in earlier times, while other historians like Brian Stock have developed the concept of intertextuality within the history of thought7 .

Scripturalité and Schriftlichkeit, on the other hand, seem to react maybe more directly against the fact that the material study of the documents was left to the specialists of Hilfswissenschaften.

Diplomatists since Mabillon would use these criteria to establish the authenticity of documents and thus transform them into « sources »8 . The idea of comparing sources to quarries of information without reflecting upon the function of writing in medieval societies has now been criticized for some decades. Instead, historians should bring back the sources at the centre of their work, as has been recently expressed by the rallying cry « retour aux sources ! », which is the title of the Medieval accounts, and especially manorial accounts, have been much studied since the late 19 th century. Two points of view have dominated: economic history and royal and monastic administration. The important studies in monastic administration such as those of J.A. Raftis or R.A.L. Smith are however more interested in the financial institutions than in the production of written documents themselves10 . Economic historians, for their part, have focused mainly on a certain type of accounts, namely manorial accounts, because these were their main source of information. Of all the studies that have described the structure, mechanisms and evolution of manorial accounts11 , Paul Harvey seems to be the one who has given the most attention to the documents for their own sake rather than that of economic history. He has pioneered a much more material approach of these documents, analysing the phases of writing of the accounts, the different scribes, and questioning their rationality. With the example of Cuxham and Merton college he also suggested that manorial accounts shouldn't be studied alone but in relation to the other seignorial documents 12 . This is what I would like to do at Norwich cathedral priory, but on the scale of the lordship rather than that of the manor: to study the production of written documents as a whole, between 1255 and the Black Death. I will try to understand the logics of these documents of whom many work together as a system, and to do so by giving special attention to all the material details of these sources.

In order to do this, it seems that the first step of this work would be to describe the parchment roll and of its uses.

II. A « codicology » of parchment rolls

Many historians have endorsed the fashionable expression of « archaeology of documents », but I have met as many interpretations of this concept as there are historians who use it 13 . Some insist on intertextuality, others on the making of the document. The best example of this interest is that of codicology, which aims since the 1990's to consider the materiality of the codex as an object of history 14 . Rolls are a very complex form of documents and are quite ubiquitous in England, but don't seem to have been much studied for themselves, as a support for writing 15 . In my work, I would like to list all the information that is relevant to describe the forms and uses of the parchment roll in general. But this takes a special turn in the case of manorial and obedientiary accounts, because there is a correlation between the form and the content of the document : one roll usually corresponds to one account for one officer or obedientiary and for one given period 16 . This means that all associations, groupings, reorganisations of the accounts not only have an archival meaning but also reflect the way the management of the priory was conceived. There are many clues that help us understand what has happened to these rolls :

if the roll is single, it is usually rolled from bottom to top. The head of the dorse will have the archival note if there is one and be more dirty.

if the roll is grouped in the Exchequer fashion, when different accounts are bound together by their head, it is usually rolled from top to bottom and the archival note and the dirt will be on the foot of the dorse of the last account 17 .

if an individual roll is sealed at the foot, it will be rolled from top to bottom and have a different kind of archival note at the foot of the dorse. Identically, if a schedule is attached at the top, it will be rolled in the same way. Nevertheless, you can also have schedules at the bottom of the account as well as seals at the top of the dorse, which changes the way the roll is rolled. Identically, an individual account might be rolled from top to bottom if there is a memoranda written at its foot, and so on. 15 Except mostly in some introductions to editions. 16 It would be more accurate to say that there is one roll per accounting unit. 17 There are exceptions, but not among the manorial and obedientiary accounts of the priory.

« original » text of the account but were added to the free spaces of the document. Indeed, different forms of notes may serve different purposes. Some of these notes are archival, others are not; some of them are temporary, and others are permanent. Some are contemporary of the roll, others result from later reorganisations of the archives. Illustrations 1, 2 and 3 are examples of their diversity.

Small scribbled archival notes along the edge of the account (Ill. 1), often in the corners, usually correspond to temporary archiving of individual rolls, sometimes associated with the sealing of the account. This example gives only the name of the manor and not the date of the account, which is one of the clues that speak in favour of its being temporary. On the contrary, notes such as Ill. 2 look more like permanent archival notes for individual rolls, though it is not excluded that they would rather have served as dorse notes for grouped accounts. Ill. 3 gives an example of a very small archival note, not associated with sealing, most likely temporary. Indeed, the title at the foot of the face of the account (in the framed illustration) is a non-archival note for grouped accounts, showing that the account was intended to be archived -ultimately -in this fashion, whereas the note on the dorse is only for an individual account.

The same diversity of notes can be found at the head of the dorse and the foot of the face.

What is interesting is that most rolls possess many of these contradictory indications, meaning that they were alternatively kept in different fashions. Some rare medieval archival notes show that the accounts of the manors of the prior were at least at some point planned to be grouped together 19 . A grouped account roll -here with fourteen accounts from twelve different manors (Ill. 4) -is quite an impressive document and not very easy to handle. Once we have understood all these mechanisms, it is possible to recreate from the same kind of material clues all the steps that a single account has gone through, from the blank parchment to its present state in the archives.

III.Accounts and « chaîne d'écriture »

This concept is called the « chaîne d'écriture ». It was adopted, among others, by Étienne Anheim in his work on the papal Exitus and Introitus rolls 22 . Every document is the result of a writing process that is made of different steps, at different rhythms. Identifying these different steps is a way of understanding how documents worked, how they were produced and what they were used for. Paul Harvey has already shown that the writing of the accounts can spread over many weeks before the end of the accounting year 23 . But this was in the context of professional clerks writing accounts on behalf of the manorial officers. At Norwich cathedral priory, we are in a different situation, a situation where the production of these documents was centralized -meaning that the accounts were produced by the lord and not by his manorial officer. Paul Harvey has underlined the differences between these two configurations and suggested that the latter was common in the earlier times of manorial accounting and might have remained the norm in lordships who were among the first to adopt this practice, such as the bishopric of Winchester 24 . Indeed, at Norwich, the clerks who wrote the accounts did so on behalf of the priory itself and not of the reeves or sergeants, so it is the monks who controlled every step of the accounting process. Thus, every detail reveals the monks' attitude towards accounting. As we will see, the making of the accounts can be quite complex.

Temporary sums of paragraphs in right and left margins

The usual phases of accounting may include a draft, then drawing the account in one or more steps, auditing it and archiving it after sometimes making copies of it. Here, the phases of redaction follow very variable patterns, being written either in one, two or more phases. Small sums were sometimes added in the right and left margins of the account, mainly under prior William of Claxton (1326-1344). These show how variable the overall chronology of the end of the accounting year could be because these sums, which are temporary sums of the paragraphs of the account, might correspond to very different stages of the redaction 25 . They were often added when the account was almost fully written, right before the audit, but sometimes they were added halfway through and differ widely from the definitive sums. The most logical explanation would be that these sums were calculated at some point when the monks wanted to have preview of the balance of the account. The difference between the stages at which these sums were calculated might result from the fact that all the manorial accounts -and especially under William of Claxton -were written by the same clerk. This represents a considerable amount of work and it would be normal not to expect all manorial accounts to be finished at the same time.

Sealing

Another action that has to be fitted in this « chaîne d'écriture » is the sealing of some of the accounts. Indeed, some documents have a vertical slit at their foot, which might or not be associated with marks of wax. Others have marks of wax at the head of the dorse. The logic of the sealing isn't yet clear as for the same year, only certain manorial accounts might have such characteristics 26 .

Small sums of receipts and expenses at head and foot of the account

Small sums an various memoranda can be found along the top or bottom edges of the accounts. Some of these notes have partly disappeared at some point in the accounting process when the top or bottom edges of the manorial accounts were cut. The reason for cutting these informations out of the roll isn't clear either. All these different steps -sealing, cutting, calculating in the margins, adding memoranda -show how accounts at their different stages were used by the monks for management purposes. Among these memoranda, I would like to stress one particular kind that presents itself as sums of receipts and expenses.

Small isolated sums of receipts and expenses found on the very edges of the rolls are among the most interesting features of these manorial accounts (Ill. 6). They appear either at the top and bottom, head or dorse, and some of them can only be guessed after having been partially cut off, as we have already mentioned. They all have in common to be legible from a closed roll without having to open it, wherever their location. Some are written vertically on the head of the dorse, which might have made them visible even from an archival bag. Others are written in the corners of the face and can be seen by looking under the loose corners of the closed roll. The rolls were probably stored individually at the priory while they were being written and until the audit, as the titles at the foot of the face are usually added after the audit27 . These sums are of two kinds : they are either the totals of the receipts and expenses of the last view of account or the totals of the current annual account before the audit28 . Because they were read from a closed roll, I would tend to think that these sums were used before the audit, while the accounts were probably kept 26 And some sealing marks might have disappeared when some accounts were trimmed.

individually at the priory, sometimes sealed. One explanation to the need for such information would be to estimate and demand in advance of the audit money owed by the manorial officer ;

another would be to assess the financial situation of a manor or even of the whole demesne. The monks would thus have been able to plan a reaction to this financial situation by deciding to charge more or less the officers in charge of the manors. It is also worth noting that these two kinds of notes don't appear in the same periods between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, so they might tell us more about the different priors' attitudes towards accounting. These notes may count as an additional accounting practice that can be put in series with other accounting or management practices to describe more precisely the evolution of the calculations made by the monks.

IV. Introducing standards of writing and accounting practices

After having seen how to decompose a single account, I would like to give an example of what can be done on a larger scale by putting these different elements into perspective. This example is that of Henry of Lakenham, who was sacrist under William of Kirkby between 1272 and 1289 and was his successor as a prior between 1289 and 1310. As a prior, Henry of Lakenham had an innovating role concerning economic documents 29 and it would be interesting to find out if this already appeared when he was the sacrist. This happened at the same time that these two men, Henry of Lakenham and William of Kirkby, took an active part in the foundation of the college of Gloucester for the Benedictine monks in Oxford and the correlation between management practices and the intellectual context of the Benedictine monks should be taken into account 30 . The Norwich monks have from an early date calculated what is usually called the profit of their manors 31 . These profit calculations have been listed in specific rolls from the time of Henry as a sacrist 32 . Palaeographical identifications are tricky, but I have tried to build links between the clerks who dealt with profit calculations and the other clerks in the priory. So far it hasn't given much results, as it is quite complex. It does show, though, a continuity between the profit rolls of William Kirby and the register under Henry of Lakenham. It is also likely that the clerk who made substantial additions to the calendar in the sacrist's register is the same as the one who wrote the sacrist's account of 1273, the first year of Henry in that office, which would set a terminus post quem for this codex.

Moreover, these comparisons pointed out that the tasks of the different clerks employed at the priory seemed more loosely defined under William of Kirkby than later under Henry of Lakenham. Indeed, some time after 1300, there seems to be one clerk writing many of the manorial accounts of the priory, and this clerk is also writing the accounts of the master of the cellar and the register of profits. This shows an important centralization of the writing process within the priory that was maintained under the successors of Henry and even maybe pushed further by William of Claxton.

As a prior, it is already known that he began to reorganize the charters of the priory 33 and would indicate a strong personality. On the contrary, when he becomes prior, the personality of his own obedientiaries seems erased from the titles of their accounts. The example of the refectorer is quite striking : the first year of Henry still follows the previous habit of naming the refectorer in the title 36 , but throughout the rest of his priorate the refectorer's accounts don't even have a title at the head of the roll. The only title is at the foot of the account and is most impersonal 37 . Very strikingly, under the next prior, Robert of Langley, after 1310, nearly all the accounts bear in first postion the name of the obedientiary and it is also the case of the refectorer 38 . This gives the impression of a stronger role and a better representation of the person of the prior over the other obedientiaries under the priorate of Henry of Lakenham.

Conclusion

This is only one example, but there are others and it seems to me that to study accounts in this way may give new insight in the relationships between the monks, their organisation, personality and conflicts. In the course of my study, I also aim to catalogue, compare and describe the various economic logics of the Norwich documentation -though much has been done already concerning the profit-and-loss calculations 39 -considering not only the accounts, but the whole system of economic documents : registers, profit calculations, estimations of the granges, etc. This seigniorial approach of the problem might help to understand why these documents were produced and what purpose they were used for, as well as the organisation behind the centralized writing of such an amount of information. I hope, by doing this, to synthesize the work that has been done on obedientiary and manorial accounts and to go beyond the traditional fracture between the notions of « estate » and « household ».

Festschrift

  offered in 2004 to Michel Parisse 9 . It is also clearly the purpose of this conference.

  13 P. Chastang, 'L'Archéologie du texte médiéval. Autour des travaux récents sur l'écrit au Moyen Âge', Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 63/2 (March-April 2008), pp. 245-269 or P. Beck, Archéologie d'un document d'archives. Approche codicologique et diplomatique des cherches des feux bourguignonnes (1285-1543) (Paris, 2006) are examples of different uses of this concept. 14 C. Bozzolo, E. Ornato, Pour une histoire du livre manuscrit au Moyen Âge : trois essais de codicologie quantitative (Paris, 1980); O. Guyotjeannin, L. Morelle, M. Parisse (ed.), Les Cartulaires, Mémoires et documents de l'École des chartes, 39 (Paris, 1993); P. Chastang, Lire, écrire, transcrire. Le Travail des rédacteurs de cartulaires en Bas-Languedoc (XI e -XIII e s.) (Paris, 2002); Beck, Archéologie d'un document d'archives.

  Ill. 1 : Some notes are linked to the sealing of the account (Norfolk Record Office, DCN 62/2, foot of dorse) Ill. 2 : Others seem to be standard archival notes for single account rolls(NRO, DCN 61/45. Wicklewood 1337-38, foot of dorse) Sealing wax and slit Ill. 3 : Others seem temporary and are associated with a title at the foot of the face (NRO, DCN 60/7/6. Denham, 1313, foot of dorse) Nowadays, nearly all the accounts of Norwich Cathedral Priory are archived individually because the grouped accounts seem to have been separated at some point between the 19 th century, when archival notes show that part of them at least were still enrolled in the Exchequer fashion, and today. At the time when they were still preserved at the cathedral before being handed over to the Norfolk Record Office, Barbara Dodwell reorganized the Dean and Chapter archives. She elaborated her own catalogue where account rolls were numbered individually and sorted by manors which shows that the grouped accounts had already been separated by that time 18 . There often is evidence that the accounts have gone through various stages of grouping and degrouping in the course of centuries. This seems to have been a frequent practice in Britain down to the 20 th century. By establishing which accounts were grouped together and how, we can see the archival patterns vary under different priors, under different obedientiaries or from one kind of account to the other. At Norwich cathedral priory, there are sixteen manors of the prior which come under the control of the master of the cellar. There are other manors which belong to the other obedientiaries.

  Ill. 4 : Grouped account roll for twelve manors for the year1333-34 (NRO, DCN 62/2) 18 It is unlikely that she was responsible herself for degrouping the rolls as it wouldn't make sense with the fact that she registered as such the handful of grouped manorial accounts that survive -including two pre-Black Death items. I am grateful to M. Frank Meeres for his information on this catalogue. 19 Among others, a note at the foot of the dorse of the account of Sedgeford for the year 1325-26 (NRO, DCN 660/33/25) : « Compotus maneriorum prioris Norwici anno R de Langele prioris XVIImo ». Very small size : « Denham anno R prioris quarto » Ill. 5 : Non-archival titles for grouped accounts at the foot of the face a. Manorial accounts, 1333-34 (NRO, DCN 62/2) b. Foot of the account for Gateley, 1326-27 (NRO, DCN 62/1) This is why nearly all the accounts of the manors of the prior have an additional title at the foot of the face of the account (Ill. 5). This title helps to identify the different components of a grouped roll and to open it at the right item 20 . On the contrary, the accounts of the obedientiaries' manors usually don't have a title at the foot of the face, but they often have a title at the foot of the dorse even when it is the same scribe who wrote both kinds of manorial accounts. Obedientiaries probably kept the accounts of their manors in their own fashion, either single or grouped 21 .

Ill. 6 :

 6 Marginal notes of receipts and expenses a. Monks' Grange, 1335 (NRO, DCN 60/26/25) « Summa rec' 11 li' 13 s' q' 9 d' o' q' Summa exp' Ciii s' 9 d' q' -Et sic debet serviens L s' o' »  Totals and balance of the account before audit at the foot of the recto b. Martham, 1326 (NRO, DCN 60/23/21) « Recept' xxxvii li' iiii s' vii d' Expen' xxviii li' xiiii s' »  Totals of the last view of account, at the head of the dorse c. Hindringham, 1328 (NRO, DCN 60/20/23) « r' ... Exp' ... »  Totals of the last view of account, at the head of the recto, cut off

  studying the archival notes on the obedientiaries' accounts, we might suppose that these accounts could also have been reorganized under his priorate. The archival note in illustration 7.a has been added by a different scribe to an account of the time of William of Kirkby. The scribe was actually the clerk of the chamberlain under Henry of Lakenham 17 years later (ill. 7.b). Ill. 7 : a. Almoner's account for 1275-76 (DCN 1/6/1). The hand of the note is different from the hand of the account : « Compotus elemosinarii anno W. prioris quarto / Quarto / Compotus obedienciarorum Norwici anno W. de Kirkeby prioris quarto » b. Chamberlain's account for 1292-93 (DCN 1/5/1). The hand of the note is identical to the hand of the account : « Compotus camerarii anno H. prioris quinto »To summarize, Henry, as well as developing different stages of profit calculations, has reorganized the older obedientiaries' accounts and the writing of the manorial accounts (giving also special care to the aesthetic value of these documents). If I can add one last thing to this, it is how his personality has gone as far as to influence the presentation of the obedientiaries' accounts. Let's consider how the titles of the accounts are phrased -to see whether the obedientiary is expressly named, for example, or how the account is dated.

  See for example M.T. Clanchy, 'Moderni in Education and Government in England', Speculum 50/4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 671-88 and D. Knowles, 'Some Developments in English Monastic Life, 1216-1336', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4 th ser., 26 (1944), pp. 37-52. 31 A full article on this subject is that of Stone, 'Profit-and-Loss Accountancy'. 32 The 10 th year of William of Kirkby, 1281-82, is the earliest for which survives a profit roll. 33 B. Dodwell, 'The Muniments and the Library', in I. Atherton et alii (ed.

	. By
	29 E. Stone, ' Profit-and-Loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral Priory', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
	5 th ser., 12 (1962), pp. 25-48, at p.33 et seq.; B.M.S. Campbell, Seigniorial agriculture; B.M.S. Campbell, ' Arable
	Productivity in Medieval England : Some Evidence from Norfolk', Journal of Economic History 43/2 (June 1983)
	pp. 379-404, at p.397.
	30

), Norwich Cathedral : Church, City and Diocese,

1096-1996 (London, 1996)

, pp. 325-38.

  Under William of Kirkby, many obedientiary accounts are anonymous, like for example that of the almoner for 1275-76 : « Receptum elemosinarii Norwici anno domini m° cc lxx° sexto » 34 . Throughout Kirkby's priorate, Henry, as the sacrist, stands out with only two or three others as men who had themselves named in the title :

	« Compotus fratris H de Lakenham de anno suo primo » in 1272-73 ; « Compotus fratris Henri de
	anno suo quartodecimo » in 1285-86 35 . The most usual way of dating accounts -though is is not

always regularly followed in the earliest accounts -is by the year of the prior, but as you can see Henry goes further by dating his account solely after himself, de anno suo, which is highly unusual 34 NRO, DCN 1/6/1. 35 NRO, DCN 1/4/1, 6.

  36 « Compotus fratris Reyner' refectorarii anno prioris H primo », at the head of the roll (NRO, DCN 1/8/1).

37 « Compotus refectorarii anno H prioris undecimo

» in 1298-99 (NRO, DCN 1/8/11) ; « Compotus refectorarii anno H prioris xii° » in 1299-1300 (NRO, DCN 1/8/12); « Compotus refectorarii anno H prioris xxi° » in 1308-9 (NRO, DCN 1/8/20). 38 « Compotus fratris G de Wroxham de refectorarie anno Roberti prioris secundo » in 1310-11, at the head of the roll again (NRO, DCN 1/8/21). 39 Stone, ' Profit-and-Loss Accountancy'.

The Obedientiaries of WestminsterAbbey and their Financial Records : c. 1275-1540, ed. B. Harvey (Woodbridge : Rochester, 2002).

Neither general textbooks on manorial records such as those of Harvey, Manorial Records, or M. Bailey, The English Manor c.1200-c.1500(Manchester, 2002) deal with them, nor does for example C.M. Woolgar in his Household Accounts in Medieval England(Oxford, 1993).

This kind of approach has been called for by Alain Guerreau. A. Guerreau, L'Avenir d'un passé incertain : Quelle histoire du Moyen Âge au XXI e siècle ?(Paris, 2001).

M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307 (Oxford, 1979).

R. Mc Kitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989) ; R. Mc Kitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990) ; B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983).

O. Guyotjeannin, Les Sources de l'histoire médiévale(Paris, 1998).

S. Gougenheim (ed.), Retour aux sources : Textes, études et documents d'histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse(Paris, 2004).

R.A.L. Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory. A Study in Monastic Administration (Cambridge, 1943); J.A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey(Toronto, 1957).

F.B. Stitt, 'The Medieval Minister's Account', Society of Local Archivists Bulletin 11 (1953), pp. 2-8; J.S. Drew, 'Manorial Accounts of St Swithun's Priory, Winchester', The English Historical Review 62 (1947), pp. 20-41; P.D.A. Harvey, Manorial Records of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, circa

1200 -1359 (London, 1976)); D. Postles, 'Manorial Accountancy of God's House, Southampton', Archives 28/77 (April 1987), pp. 37-41. There are also more general textbooks on manorial documents : P.D.A. Harvey, Manorial Records, London, 1984 ; The English Manor c.1200c.1500, ed. M. Bailey, (Manchester, 2002). 12 Harvey, Manorial Records of Cuxham, p.3 : 'There still seems a genuine need to publish in a single work a substantial corpus of all types of documentary evidence from a single manor, thus demonstrating the sort of information to be looked for from each source and the relationships between them'.

This has already been noted by N.R. Holt in his edition of The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric ofWinchester 1210-1211 (Manchester, 1964), p. x : 'when the sewn membranes were rolled from head to foot to form the " rotulus", the feet were left exposed, making reference to the account of any one manor both speedy and simple'.

At this point of my research, the exact pattern of archiving of these rolls isn't clear yet.

This can be seen when the hand of the audit is different from that of the redaction, or when the note at the foot of the face is explicitly added after the auditing of the account.

A partial account for Monks' Grange in the grouped account NRO, DCN 62/2 for 1326-27 presents such sums explicitly as sums of the view of account. They are often equivalent to roughly two-thirds of the final annual amounts.


The Construction of Value in 13th-and Early 14th-Century England

Between the 1180s and the 1340s, the English Kingdom, as the rest of the Latin West, saw a marked increase in the production of swritten documents used for administrative, economic, or legal purposes -a phenomenon which is described as the pragmatic turn in literacy. This phenomenon was especially strong in England, for a series of factors including the strongly centralized administration of the English Crown, as we know of course from Michael Clanchy's famous work. New types of records such as accounts, surveys, bonds and quittances, cartularies, and legal and judicial documents were more commonly used and contributed to the structuring of the administrative state and other institutions.

What is less studied is how this pragmatic literacy impacted on economic thought through the development of pragmatic numeracy, which can be defined as the handling of numbers for economic and administrative purposes. The most important exception to this is the outstanding work of Joel Kaye. In his recent book on the History of Balance, Joel Kaye has demonstrated how a conceptual shift in thought occurred between 1250 and 1375, leading to a more geometrical, a more proportional conception of the the world, expressed through the central notion of balance. If we look closely at English seignorial accounts in this period, we can indeed see that there are some important changes taking place at a very elementary level: for example, the most striking evolution is how increasingly frequent is the use of the division. I have mostly studied the accounts of Norwich Cathedral Priory, so most of my examples will come from there. Norwich manorial accounts begin in the 1250s, and what I can see in these accounts is that they will increasingly mention the price per unit, they will calculate the rate of grain sown per acre, they will calculate the value of animals per animal, and they will calculate cereal yield ratios no only in grains harvested per grain sown, but also in grains harvested per acre. Such calculations which rely on dividing one number by another increase in frequency in the last quarter of the 13th century, and so we can really see how the way numbers are used to frame agricultural practice is changing, although one must stay aware that what we see are only the records of the larger seignorial landlords, especially monasteries.

It is important to understand first that the reason why we have such an incredible insight in English medieval agriculture is twofold: the first reason is that in the 13th century most lords progressively took their demesne back into direct management. Estates, divided into manors, were run by manorial officers who had to render account of everything that was produced on the demesne. The second reason is that these manorial accounts were often put into writing and that the account rolls have been rather well preserved compared to what can be found on the Continent. The earliest existing manorial accounts were produced by the Bishopric of Winchester from 1207/8 onwards; the practice grew increasingly after 1250 and became more generalized after c.1275.

In this paper I would like to highligh another fundamental change in the construction of value in this period, which is a new and varied interest for the annual net produce of agriculture. Again, we are here in a seignorial context, which is quite specific, but at that time we observe many large lordships engaging in the calculation of the value of their estates, of the value of their arable land, and in the value of their farm animals. I will begin by detailing this, before proposing some explanations.

PROFIT, WAINAGE AND EXTENT

Manorial accounts are parchment rolls on which are listed as receipts everything that was produced by the manor, and then as expenses all the costs incurred by the manorial officers. But from the beginning, manorial accounts could also feature in addition a value called the proficuum or profectus, meaning the profit of the manor.

According to Eric Stone, profit is the annual net value of a manor, which includes agriculture, but also rents and court proceedings. Although it is not always clear how it was calculated, a 1258/1259 account from Canterbury Cathedral Priory confirms that it was generally the difference between the value of the produce and the associated costs. In order to achieve this, the produce which was not sold but consumed in kind was converted into a monetary value, either by using a standard value, or the current price of grain.

Soon after, another value appears: it is called waniagium, or wainage. Whereas profit is the value of the manor as a whole, wainage is the annual net value of the cultivation of cereals. A late-14th-century accounting treatise from St Alban's explains that it can be calculated by adding the value of all the cereals produced, then deducing all the costs of agriculture.

But at Norwich Cathedral Priory, a rich community of Benedictine monks, another method is used, more complicated but also quite revealing. They took the profit, and deduced from it all the income which did not come from cereals -for example, tithes, livestock, the proceeds of justice, etc., while adding the costs that did not relate to agriculture. What the very rich records of Norwich Cathedral Priory reveal is how the understanding of the costs of agriculture became more refined at the end of the 13th century. For example, the value of livestock has to be deduced, and this is accounted for in two ways. First, as the difference between stock bought and stock sold, accounting for trade in animals. But cows are also farmed for their milk and calf: the produce of cows is accounted for as the value for which they could have been leased out, because this corresponds to the standard value of a cow's produce. And the expenses for manure are accounted for by deducing the value at which pastures could have been leased out, because pasture yields manure, and manure, as a fertilizer, counts as a cost for the cultivation of cereals. And, indeed, meadows and pastures are deduced expressly as costs of the cultivation of cereals. Another sign of the focus on net values is that income from the courts and mills is said to be ad commodum, which means that it is the difference between income from these activities and their costs. This refined understanding of costs can be seen at least in part as a consequence of the shift in favour of direct management, in the sense that if you have an officer on your manor and you want to control him, you need to know as precisely as possible what you are in right to expect from your land and your animals, and you need to assess the costs that your officer is in right to claim. As a matter of fact, this is repeated at length in the agrarian treatises which are written in the same period.

Profit and wainage are calculated year on year, but English lords also sought to establish standard values for land and animals. This is the practice of extentare, which means to evaluate something. An extent is a document evaluating all the components of a manor, and so the word is commonly used to describe the standard value of these components, for example, the standard value of an acre of arable land. It is unclear how this was calculated; it is sometimes suggested that it was calculated from the average data of manorial accounts.

In the late 1270s, a popular agrarian treatise known as Walter of Henley's Husbandry hints at a new practice: lords should "lead their life according to the extent", meaning that they should compare their agricultural income with the standard value that is expected.

And sure enough, it becomes the practice of certain lords to compare every year the true arable value of their arable land -the wainage -with the standard value of that land, the extent, in order to see if they made a loss or a profit. However, one should not deduce that this was an unbridled profit-seeking attitude: on the contrary, the idea was mostly that land and animals had an expected yield -possibly one ordered by God -an that one should attain this quota, but not seek to produce more.

Although profit and wainage have complex uses, the comparison between wainage and extent served first and foremost to control manorial officers. The St Alban's treatise seems to conclude that if the wainage is insufficient, the officer himself has to make up for it and top up. This is akin to a quota of production, a practice which is well attested in English demesne-farming at the time, for example with cereal yield ratios.

FROM AGRICULTURE TO TAXATION: NEW USES FOR THE VALUE OF ARABLE

This flourishing of new concepts however does not happen in isolation, it is not limited to seignorial agriculture. If English monks are lords who have to run estates, they are also subject to the new burden of royal and papal taxation. Royal taxation on laymen is assessed on the value of moveables. But as it is not tolerable to reduce the assets of the Church, ecclesiastics are taxed not on their moveables, but on their income. Usually taxation took the form of a tithe, meaning one tenth of annual net income.

Here again, between the 1200s and the 1330s, the process of assessing annual net income for taxation purposes becomes more precise. This is expressed by the words used in justifying new assessments: until the 1250s, ecclesiastics are expected to state their income under oath, but in 1254, a new assessment is made by the chief collector Walter Suffield, Bishop of Norwich, which claims to establish a iusta estimacio, a "just evaluation", on the basis of an inquest, then the following year a papal nuncio demands a reassessment so that from iusta it should become vera, a "true" evaluation. In the following decades the pursuit of a verus valor, a true value, is a leitmotiv of taxation -mostly a pligh to obtain more money.

In 1291, when Pope Nicholas IV allows the king to levy an ecclesiastical tithe for six consecutive years to finance a hypothetical crusade, much effort is put into assessing accurately ecclesiastical income all over the Kingdom [Diapo]. Official guidelines are to calculate the average income using manorial accounts for a number of consecutive yearsand when we look at taxation records, it appears that they simply used the extent as a proxy for ecclesiastical income, which reinforces the idea that the extent is an average value. In any case, basic running costs should be deduced from taxation. It is not surprising that the methods used for assessing taxation align themselves with the agrarian calculations which we have discussed, as they are often done by the same men.

In the early decades of the tithe, between the 1220s and 1240s, when monks had to swear the amount of their income to the assessor, it is not impossible that profit calculations served the monks for assessing their income and making sure they didn't commit perjury.

And when taxators began using manorial accounts for their assessment, it is not unthinkable that the practice of written accounts could have been encouraged and fostered by taxators. To summarize, the calculation of net agricultural income was a common problem both for taxation and for estate management.

As a conclusion, it appears that both seignorial agriculture and ecclesiastical taxation focussed on a better calculation of value, based on a refined and more precise 6 understanding of costs, and juggling between standard values which sometimes serve as quotas, and actual values calculated from the accounts. However, in 1294, the value of taxation is settled once and for all and not reassessed, and in the 1330s, lords begin to revert to farming out their estates: and so the face of pragmatic numeracy shifts towards new problems. Thus comes to a close a very specific moment in English economic thought, which was certainly not without longstanding repercussions on the definition of economic value.