| Description | In the later 1250s, a series of accounts begin to appear for the around 61 individual manors of the priory. By about the 1270s, these accounts had settled down into a standard format.
On the recto, the accounting official recorded his receipts, from arrears, rents, sales of corn and stock, and his expenses, payments to the treasurer, entertainment of monks visiting the manor (especially significant for those manors on the Canterbury-London road), transport costs, repairs to carts, houses, mills, ditches, and banks, wages of himself and his staff (carters, herdsmen, threshers, mowers), harvest costs, and extraordinary expenses. On the dorse, accounts were drawn up listing the amounts of the various types of corn sewn and harvested (often described as the issues of the grange), and detailing all the animals and fowls (the stock account). These accounts were usually drawn up annually, unless there was a change in the official during the year, when two or more accounts might be drawn up. An inventory of the surviving stock and the farm and household goods of the manor was also drawn up and attached to the account. By the fourteenth century's second quarter, this inventory was only being compiled when there was a change of official.
The official was often initially termed 'reeve' (prepositus) , but from the 1270s, it was usual to find a serjeant (serviens) accounting, though there was little real difference between the two. It was a post often held for long periods on some manors, and there appears to have been no system of annual rotation. From around 1350, on some manors the bedels begin to account separately for the rents and these accounts continue into the fifteenth century. However, direct exploitation of the demesne by the monks ended around 1393, with the priory's manors being let to farm. The farmers' accounts do initially include accounts of their corn and stock, but these soon disappear in the fifteenth century and their accounts become very brief statements of the amount of their farm and any expenditure on building repairs. |
| Publication Note | HALL, Hubert, and Nicholas, Frieda J., 'Manorial Accounts of the Priory of Canterbury, 1260-1420...', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 8 (1930-1), pp.136-55. [Includes list of account rolls of 22 selected manors in Kent, Essex and Suffolk, with an index of beadles' names.] [Annotated copy: MSS. Cat. 69.]; A 'Rough Check List of Bedels Rolls' (2.pp.; typescript, n.d. [temp. W.G. Urry?]),listing 43 manors and the regnal periods covered, is in the black file labelled 'Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury..'[Archivist's Office.] For the accounts of the serjeant of the barton ploughland, see this Guide, s.v. ACCOUNTS: Obedientiaries: Bartoner [no.24 ] |