Profit-and-Loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral Priory

Abstract

Manorial accounts by their existence reflect, somewhat after the event, an administrative revolution that almost swept away the firmarii characteristic of an earlier stage in the management of large estates. During the greater part of the thirteenth century and of the next, lords (or their advisers) generally seem convinced that to manage their manors through fully accountable local officials was preferable to the familiar alternative of committing the property to men whose responsibility would be limited to producing a stipulated annual return. In the thirteenth century, also, many of these lords—monastic lords perhaps especially—displayed a remarkable readiness, sometimes a positive enthusiasm, to undertake the trouble and risks of demesne husbandry, instead of letting their demesnes entire or piecemeal to tenants. This addiction to demesne husbandry, though it may have weakened before the close of the century, persisted in the next; it survived the first consequences of the Black Death and was not widely given up until the last thirty years of the fourteenth century.