166
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
payment is from time to time stated on the rolls as a distinct
and separable item in the farm.1
If the motive which has been suggested for the reduction
of the farm in ибо and 1167 be the true one, the emergence
of much heavier debts in the middle period of the reign may
have made this very moderate relief too ludicrously inadequate
to be resorted to again. The very sheriffs who obtained the
relief in 1166—67 were charged the full amount in 1167-68,
though they paid only a little over £3 of it in that year.2
It would be hasty to conclude from such debts that the
amount of the farm was in itself too heavy to be borne. On
several occasions, as already mentioned, the whole sum was
paid off within the year and in nearly as many cases the debt
fell well below £100. Practically the entire indebtedness of
the sheriffs was also wiped out sooner or later, though only,
no doubt, by multiplying them and changing them frequently,
thus leaving each free to work off his debt. A considerable
part of the farm must have been neither more nor less than
a fine on the sheriffs. Yet this perhaps need not have been
the case, had the farm been the only financial burden imposed
upon the city. The oppressive auxilia and dona levied upon
London as upon other boroughs,3 at fairly frequent intervals,
1 In his valuable paper on " The Sheriff’s Farm,” Mr. G. J. Turner cor-
rectly states the farm as £500 blanch and £22 by tale for all the years he
examined but one (Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., N.S. xii (1898), 145). The farm
in 13 Hen. II was £500 only. Perhaps there is a misprint for 15 Hen. II.
Dr. Round, though he did not work out the accounts, gives the correct
amount of the farm for the years 1169-74, where it is stated in or directly
deducible from them, but, apparently misled by a tale payment in sheriffs’
arrears, he speaks of the farm as £500 blanch " plus a varying sum of about
£20 ' numéro ’ (i.e. tale),” and as being ” between ^520 and /530 ” (Com-
mune of London, 1899, pp. 229, 233). Mr. Page ignores the £22 altogether
(London, p. 106). Dr. Round’s conversion of the whole farm into /547
by tale (by adding a shilling in the pound on the £500 blanch) is useful for
Comparisonwiththeaccounts of the keepers of 1174-76, which were not
blanched, but has helped to mislead Sir James Ramsay. Misunderstanding
the remark that ,' the exact amount of the high farm is first recorded in
1169,” Sir James refers to " the /547 to which the farm had been raised
in 1169 from the £300 at which it had been previously held ” (Angevin
Empire, p. 317). Apart from the post-dating of the rise in the farm by
many years, the figures compared are not expressed in the same mode of
computation.
г P.R. 14 Hen. II, p. 2.
’ See Carl Stephenson, " The Aids of the English Boroughs,” E.H.R.
xxxiv. 457-75. In his table (p. 469) Mr. Stephenson inserts among the
London taxes a donum of 1000 marks in 7 Hen. II and an aid of the same
amount in 8 Hen. II. That there was aid in the latter year is certain and
it is quite likely to have been 1000 marks, but the membrane of the Pipe
Roll is imperfect and shows no total. Has Mr. Stephenson identified it
with the “ old aid ” of 1000 marks on the roll of the ninth year (p. 72) ?
That is certainly the donum of 7 Hen. II (P.R. p. 18).
REVOCABLE GRANTS OF FIRMA BURGI 167
seem sometimes to coincide significantly with a crisis in the
collection of the farm. Some light is perhaps thrown upon the
incomplete account of 1159 and the large debt of the next
year by the payment of a donum of £1043. It can hardly be
mere coincidence either that 1168 when the farm practically
remained unpaid was also the year in which £537 was collected
from the city towards the aide pur fille marier. Nevertheless,
it must be admitted that an aid of nearly £300 in 1165 and of
£630 in 1177 do not seem to have interfered in the least with
the raising of the farm.
When the two sheriffs of 1163-68 went out of office at
Easter 1169, they were required to account for their large
debt jointly with the half-year’s farm, instead of separately as
heretofore,1 and the same arrangement was applied annually
to their four successors, who held office until Christmas 1173.
If it was hoped to secure any financial advantage thereby,
the change of system was a disastrous failure, for the sheriffs
paid nothing into the treasury after 1170 and accumulated
a debt of nearly £950, about twice the average per annum for
the period before 1168, and the Crown had to wait much longer
for its money. The arrangement, however, was continued
under new sheriffs for eighteen months until in June, 1174,
two keepers (custodes) were appointed who, unlike the sheriffs,
were not to answer for the farm, but only for its issue (exitus).2
In other words, they accounted merely for the disbursements
they made by the king’s order, paying no cash into the treasury
and making no heavy debts. The actual Crown receipts from
them were not very greatly less than those from the sheriffs
of recent years, for the sum of roughly £200 blanch which the
keepers accounted for in their one complete financial year,
1174-75, after deducting their expenses,3 did not fall much
more than £30 below the total receipts of 1173 4 or more than
£66 below the average of those of 1171 and 1172. But the
Crown of course lost a great deal more than this, something
like £320 per annum in all, because it no longer collected the
debts due from sheriff farmers as arrears of their farm.
There can be no doubt that Dr. Round is right in regarding
1 P.R. 15 Hen. II, p. 169. a Ibid. 20 Hen. II, p. 9.
3 Ibid. 21 Hen. II, pp. 15-17. The keepers accounted ɪn current money,
but it is here blanched to facilitate comparison with the payments of years
in which the city was at farm.
1 The outgoing sheriffs paid up most of their arrears by Michael-
mas, but these were charged to them individually in equal shares (ibid.
19 Hen. II, pp. 187 ff.).