Account

Account of the Reeve of Brough Sowerby, 1424-5

Cumbria Record Office, Kendal, WD/Hoth, box 45

Transcript:

Translation:

Commentary:

The Manorial Documents Register includes financial accounts (Latin compoti) drawn up by manorial officials, such as reeves (or ‘graves’) and bailiffs.  The division between manorial accounts and estate accounts is somewhat arbitrary: accounts may be classed as ‘manorial’ if they contain details of income and expenditure relating specifically to manorial administration, such as income from holding manorial courts (the ‘pleas and perquisites of courts’) or from entry fines and heriots, or expenditure on carrying out a perambulation of the boundaries of the manor, for example. Manorial accounts are generally in Latin. They sometimes contain names of individual people or properties but the focus is on sums of money.

This extract from the account roll for the Clifford estates in Westmorland for the accounting year 1424-5 illustrates the typical components of manorial income accounted for by the local reeve. Thomas Skayfe’s account contains the following elements:

• arrears: none are charged to the account, as none were carried over from the account of John Scardale, the previous year’s reeve.
• free rents: a typically small sum (7d) from a freehold estate held of the manor. The sum was paid at the usual ‘terms’, Whitsuntide and Martinmas (11 November).
• leased demesne land: the manor house and demesne land has been farmed out to six tenants, who each pay 11s 3d. Few landlords were working their demesnes directly by the 15th century.
• husbandlands: these ten holdings are the peasant farms in the village. The term ‘husbandland’ was found widely in Scotland and north-east England and, less commonly, in Cumbria. It was a notional measure of land, signifying a share of the township community’s land, rather than a precise acreage. Notice that the entry refers to ten husbandlands but only eight tenants are named, probably reflecting a lack of available tenants after the Black Death, over seventy years before the date of this account. The reduction in rent paid by one of the tenants reflects the depressed economic conditions of the 1420s in northern England.
• cottages and ‘grismenland’: the sum of 52s 4d comes from a variety of other land let to the tenant community: cottages (some may have been smallholdings which were not accounted part of the core of husbandlands), ‘forland’ (a term similar to ‘assart’ or ‘intake’, i.e. land more recently enclosed and brought into cultivation, which had not been absorbed into the husbandlands and was thus accounted for separately. By the 15th century, the ‘forland’ may well have been of some antiquity: most was a result of colonisation in the 13th century), and ‘grismenland’ (probably pasture rents paid by people who did not hold cultivated land in the manor, whether cottagers with no land or people from outside the manor).
• corn mill: the manorial watermill to which the tenants were bound to take their grain to be ground.
• vaccary: a cattle farm, probably originally a demesne cattle ranch but by this date let to tenants, as the account shows.
• income from the manor court: the fines and amercements levied by the manor court formed part of the lord’s income. The account shows that only one court had been held for Brough Sowerby that year and that 2s had to be set against the income of the court (7s 8d) to pay John Glenton and Thomas Skayfe for collecting it.

After the sum of the receipts (£18 10s 3d) is noted, the final paragraph, written, significantly, in the same bolder hand as the heading of the account, explains how the money has been paid.  £16 18s 1d has gone straight to William Crackenthorpe, the lord’s receiver. After noting the income and expenditure on the holding of the manor court, 37s 9d remains and this is charged to the receiver’s account.

With thanks to John Gowling of Brough Sowerby for permission to use his transcript and translation of this extract.

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