Chapter 1 - Running the Family Business: Landed Wealth and Estate Management

Summary

To manage their large, unwieldy estates peers employed numerous officials organised in a hierarchical fashion, as exemplified in the estate accounts of the Earls of Northumberland or those of Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland. Bailiffs supervised economic activity in the primary unit of administration and accounted to receivers who were responsible for discrete blocks of territory, perhaps in a county. The latter, in turn, reported to a receiver-general who had financial oversight of the entire estate. Not uncommonly, officers maintained separate accounts for the estate and the household, respectively under the control of receivers and the steward of the household. The Master of the Horse or his equivalent often drew up distinct stable accounts, either in specific documents or filed en bloc in more general accounts. The structure was therefore capable of adaptation. For instance, within this broad framework, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, operated a flexible system, in which ‘responsibility was personal to the officer accounting rather than attached to the office or offices which he held’.

In spite of the incentive to improve their knowledge of their financial situation, landowners were slow to modernise their accounting procedure. On the estates of the Earls of Northumberland, the medieval charge/discharge system persisted and only really gave way to double-entry book-keeping after the Restoration. Stone argues that landlords were reluctant to change because they prioritised the prevention of fraud over a more accurate calculation of profit and loss. William Cavendish and his mother usually kept separate receipt and disbursement books, many of the former having been lost over time. As Riden and Fowkes indicate, Bess and her son adopted slightly different systems from the one just discussed. Bess did appoint a receiver-general but he, rather than intermediate receivers, obtained the accounts and surpluses of the bailiffs of individual manors. In the 1590s her receiver, Mr William Reason, gave the balance to Mr Timothy Pusey, her steward and main man of business. William Cavendish, who recognised Pusey's legal and administrative abilities, retained his services but divided the receivership into two, one receiver being based at Hardwick and the other at London. Although independent of each other, the gross imbalance between expenditure and income meant that the Hardwick receiver regularly remitted surplus funds to his counterpart in London. His receivers might also deal with the bailiffs but the latter often liaised with other officials.