The mere keeping the
accounts must have employed no small number of clerks, for the
minuteness with which every transaction was recorded, almost passes
belief. Those rolls I spoke of--the sacrist's, cellarer's, and so on--
were, it must be remembered, periodical balance-sheets handed in at
audit day. They deal, not only with pence and half-pence, but with
farthings and half-farthings, and were compiled from the tablets or
small account-books posted up from day to day and hour to hour. They
give the price of every nail hammered into a wall, and rarely omit
the cost of the parchment on which the roll itself is written. The
men must have been very busy, or, if you prefer it, very fussy--
certainly they could not have been idle to have kept their accounts
in this painfully minute manner, even to the fraction of a farthing.
* * * * * * *
In the natural course of events, as a monastery grew in wealth and
importance, there was one element of interest which added great zest
to the conventual life, in the _quarrels_ that were sure to
arise.
First and foremost, the most desirable person to quarrel with was a
Bishop. In its original idea, a monastery was not necessarily an
ecclesiastical institution. It was not necessary that an abbot should
be an ecclesiastic, and not essentially necessary that any one of his
monks should be in holy orders.
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