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Steyning Museum archives: Reading Medieval Documents

Two recent Museum articles have drawn on 'Account Rolls' for the Manor of Steyning in 1337-1338. All the transactions relating to the income and expenditure of the Manor were written on both sides of two parchment scrolls made from animal skins, one 5 foot long and the other 3 foot. The fact that we know that the parchment for the three foot long scroll cost the manor 3d shows how meticulous the record keeping was. The longer scroll cost 9d but that included the cost of 'heading it up' – which possibly meant all the marking up and pricking through of the parchment to allow the scribe to align his writing.

The originals are kept in the Muniment Room of Westminster Abbey, but the Museum has photographic copies. The scribe made his records using Medieval Latin and a script which is extraordinarily difficult to read. Moreover the scrolls are now badly faded in places and the text is embellished with unfamiliar abbreviations, together with a host of words and terms which do not appear in any modern dictionary. It is not too surprising that the Museum’s archivist sometimes spent an hour in deciphering just two or three lines.

Even when the words have been disentangled and translated from the Latin their meaning is often unclear. For instance, what should we make of the phrase 'and no more for 2 weeks and 5 days made at the tables in August' which appears in a part of the Account dealing with the number of bushels of barley allocated, as payment, to particular individuals. The scribe who wrote the account had no reason to explain what he meant by this or by other terms which he uses, such as 'the table month' or 'the common table' – everyone knew. But we don’t.

However there are some clues. Adam Walkelyn, the hayward, received one bushel of barley a week (with which he would have been able to brew 7-8 gallons of ale) throughout the year except during those '2 weeks and 5 days', when he was paid just one penny a day in cash. The tithing men (mentioned in an earlier article) received 1½d a day in the weeks before the '2 weeks and 5 days', but were then paid nothing for those key days. Those specific days must have been an important feature of the farming year, a time during which it was assumed that the usual direct payments were not needed. Could they, perhaps, have been the key harvest weeks during which the manor set up tables and provided the labourers with their food?

Another window into the workings of the Manor all those years ago concerns their flock of sheep. They had 15 rams, 193 sheep and 278 lambs and hoggets (sheep under 2 years) at the year end. Some 30-35 animals had died either during lambing or of the ‘murrain’ and at least some of the dead animals were eaten and their skins sold. But the business of the Manor was not to fatten sheep for sale, though there was one ram which was 'killed for harvest time' and 4 sheep which were allocated 'for the Lord’s hunting dogs'.

The main income derived from the keeping of sheep came from the sale of their fleeces – over 500 in this particular year – the shearer receiving one fleece for his pains. They had taken what precautions they could to protect their flock from disease. They spent 5 shillings on 'green powder [probably verdigris] and tar pitch' to protect the animals from sheep scab and then spent 6s 9¾d on 'bottles of ointment for putting on the sheep' to soften the fleeces before shearing.

The meticulousness of these Account Rolls is amazing. For every other animal and crop the Manor produced there is at least an equal amount of detail even if, when the scribe omitted what was obvious to him – though not to us – interpretation is problematical.
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