188 MANORIAL ADMINISTRATION
and rekenyngis in court or out of court",1 and we can under-
stand how easy it was for the priest, as the only lettered man in
the village, to be called on to make the account if a professional
scribe were not available. The accounts, in general, followed a
set formula, so that from whatever part of England they come,
they have a strong family likeness, and specimen compoti
(accounts) were available for the unskilled.2 Two qualifications
of their usefulness have to be made: they themselves sometimes
fall into confusion and repetition, thus furnishing no very
infallible guide to an inexperienced man; and they sometimes
quote figures which, though they may have been possible locally,
are very far from being generally applicable.3
The general arrangement of the account starts by naming the
manor, the year of the king's reign, and the official who presents
the account, and then gives the several main items; first the
arrears from last year, then the rents of assize, of mills, etc.;
then the sales of corn and stock, the perquisites of the court,
fines, heriots, etc. After this come the details of the expenditure,
and at the foot of the roll the balance is struck. On the back of the
roll the scribe enters an exact account of the produce of the
manor and how it has been consumed, as well as a detailed in-
ventory of the livestock, down to the smallest items. Smyth, in
his Lives of the Berkeleys tells us that the accounts of that great
family were kept in such detail that they did not
scorne to discend soe lowe, as to declare, what money was yearly made
by the sale of the locks, belts, and tags of the sheep (as well as of the
fleeces), of the hearbes of the garden, stubble from off the Come lands,
cropps and setts of withy'es of Osier rods, the Offall wood of old
hedges, of butter, cheese and milk, dung and soile, bran, nuts, wax,
Honey and the like.4
In this they only followed what was the common custom through-
out the whole country, wherever the lord found it necessary to
keep an account.
The reeve had not finished with the account once the clerk
had completed his task: he had yet to face the auditors. Large
1 Reule of Crysten Religioun (E.E.T.S.), 326.
2 See MS. Ee. i. i. f. 231 and f. 231 b in the University Library, Cambridge,
for a specimen compotus in great detail. Another in Dd. vii. 6, f. 586.
3 This point was made by Prof. A. E. Levett, Econ. Hist. Rev. i, 68.
4 Op. cit. i, 156.