Mid-13th-Century Accounts from Bury St Edmunds Abbey

BL MS Harley 645, a register from Bury, contains copies of sixty-six accounts of obedientiaries, manorial officials and others. Fifty-five date from 1247–50, eleven from 1256–61, and they may have been prepared in order to give new abbots (Edmund 1248, Simon 1257) a detailed view of the abbey’s finance. They mostly predate the adoption of formally structured written accounts at Bury and are of especial interest in throwing light on a stage in the development of estate accounts of which little evidence survives elsewhere. They also provide interesting details of the system of food farms that still operated in Bury.