Spies, debt and the well-spent penny: accounting and the Lisle agricultural estates 1533–1540

Accounting and work relationships in an eighteenth-century Italian household

“…Sentiment and familiarity also characterised the relationships between Silvia and the agents who helped her run her household. Her letters demonstrate a sort of courtesy that was not unique to Silvia or the Italian context (see Miley and Read, 2016) but rather a normal practice at the time that was also evident in the correspondence of other Friulian noblewomen (De Martin Pinter, 2013). The letters analysed displayed esteem and appreciation for the work of agents and revealed relationships halfway between the proprietorial and the familial, the subordinate and the confidential.…”

“…To extend the analysis beyond the entries in Silvia's accounting records, a collection of surviving handwritten letters addressed to agents and suppliers was also considered in this investigation. Expenses paid for the transport of goods from and to Silvia's properties, money paid to clerks, extraordinary expenses and purchases of food for workers As noted by Miley and Read (2016), limiting the examination to the financial accounts can hide aspects of household and estate management that only the narrative of correspondence can reveal. The SAU houses about 380 letters written by Silvia from April 1734 to January 1801, most of which are related to her involvement in household management (Casella, 2014;De Martin Pinter, 2013).…”

The Roles of Accounting in Agro-Pastoral Settings: The Case of the Landed Estates of Prince Sambiase in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

“…Similar concerns have been investigated in the context of seventeenth-century farms in Kent (Toke and Lodge 1927), on the Tuscan lands owned by the Bonsignori family between the end of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century (Var 1981), and in Polish manor farms in the seventeenth century (Turzynski 2001). Moreover, accounting was used by noble families as one of the techniques to adapt to an unstable political environment and to protect their wealth (Miley and Read 2016). Although the aristocracy was obviously a major landowner, during (and after) the Middle Ages the Church too enjoyed immense power and wealth, and its lands were often put to good use.…”

The farm as an accounting laboratory: an essay on the history of accounting and agriculture

“…Similarly, over the same period and in the same country, 'complex networks of accountability and information flows' existed within monastic houses and estates; the production of accounts was sometimes centralized in the hands or a bursar or treasurer (Dobie 2008, 141). Correspondence played a crucial role in the maintaining and shaping of such information flows, as it appears for instance in the management of their manorial estates by the Lisle family between 1533 and 1540 (Miley and Read 2016). These accounting systems were made possible by the availability of paper and of literate and numerate users, but they were also the consequence of broader institutional contexts.…”