ι64
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
amount of the farm and the details of the sheriff’s payments for
a long series of years they would seem to make possible an
estimate of the equity or otherwise of a farm which during
the greater part of the reign was more than two and a half
times higher than that of Southampton, the wealthiest town
after London. In the hope of some light on this point, I
have made a detailed examination of the Pipe Roll figures.
The results of such an examination cannot be explained clearly
without a preliminary word or two on the form of the sheriff’s
account. As is well known, the amount of the farm, being
well known to the officials of the exchequer, is not usually
stated on the rolls, but is easily ascertained by adding the
payments with which the sheriffs were credited to their
debt on the year.1 In point of fact, however, owing to a
temporary change in the system of account between 1169
and 1173, the actual figure of the farm is for that period given
upon the rolls. On two occasions, as will be seen later, that
figure was slightly reduced for a particular year. Against it
in the rolls the sheriffs are credited with (ɪ) cash paid by them
into the Treasury, (2) allowances for sums expended by them
in the financial year on the king’s behalf, by custom or by his
writs or those of his deputies. Cash payments, however,
were only made in seventeen of the thirty-two years of the
reign for which we have complete accounts. The allowances,
technically known as the issue (exitus), i.e. disbursements, of
the farm, were the permanent item in the sheriffs’ credits.
In three years only did these credits exactly balance the farm
or give the sheriffs a slight surplus.2 For the rest, a larger
or smaller debt was carried over from every Michaelmas
audit.
The number of sheriffs was normally two, but once (in
ɪ 176-77) only one and for considerable periods three or four.
As they were each personally responsible for an equal share of
the arrears of the farm,3 their multiplication facilitated the
collection of outstanding debt. There is one apparent ex-
ception to this liability when the new sheriffs of 1162-63
1 Thougli in the case of farms which were paid partly in the depreciated
currency of the time and partly in a money of account that allowed for this
depreciation ("blanched” money), the two elements cannot be isolated,
unless they are kept apart in the account. The total must be calculated
in one or other of the two modes of computation.
, 1162-63, n64-65, n76-77. In three other cases, new sheriffs enter-
ing office during the financial year had no debt at the end of their first
quarter or half-year.
a The widow of one was charged with the balance of his arrears.
REVOCABLE GRANTS OF FIRMA BURGI 165
paid the arrears of their predecessors for the two preceding
years, amounting to over £250? This may have been by
private arrangement.
The first extant account, that of Michaelmas 1156,2 is
only for nine months, but assuming that the farm was wholly
payable in blanched money and reducing the allowances,
which were always expressed by tale {i.e. in current coin),
to blanch by the exchequer method of deducting a shilling
in each pound, we discover that the sheriffs accounted for
£390 lʒʃ. 6d. blanch or at the rate of £520 185. per annum.
Similar treatment of all the other farming accounts of the
reign but two produces the same total.3 County farms
payable entirely in blanched money were rarely round sums
and it is not until Michaelmas 1160 that we get the least hint
that the farm of London and Middlesex was in part paid in
current coin. In that account the sheriffs’ debt, much the
highest so far, is divided into £364 ɪɪʃ. 7d. blanch and £22 by
tale.4 The distinction is clearly connected with the simul-
taneous reduction of the farm for the following year, the last
of these sheriffs, to £500 blanch,8 for by the exchequer system
£22 by tale was blanched to £20 18s. It seems a probable
inference that at some earlier date, perhaps down to 1156,
the farm had been exactly £500 blanch and that the £22 by
tale was an increment. When the debt of 1160 was paid
in the following year, only the larger blanch sum is described
as “ of the old farm,” which suggests that the tale payment
was regarded as an appendage to, rather than integral part of,
the farm, an appendage which might, as in the present case,
be dropped as a favour to overburdened sheriffs. No such
favour was extended to the new sheriffs of 1161—62, but the
fact that their cash payment was reckoned as £198 85. 2d.
blanch and £22 tale shows that the distinction between the two
items of the farm was not a purely momentary one. Indeed
a few years later, in 1166-67, the farm was again reduced to
£500 blanch in favour of sheriffs whose debt was the next
highest, though Iongo intervalle to that of ибо,® and while the
full amount was exacted for the rest of the reign, the tale
1 P.R. 9 Hen. II, pp. 71-2. 2 Ibid. 2 Hen II, p. 13.
3 In a few years, the sum does not come out exactly, the variations
ranging from 3d. up to £t 17s. but these are evidently due to mistakes of
the scribe or printer or to errors in my arithmetic.
‘ P.R. 6 Hen. II, p. 13. δ Ibid. 7 Hen II, p. 18.
* Ibid. 13 Hen. II, pp. 2-3.