So, I was reading this book from 1806 about the duties of a Steward. It’s got loads of interesting information and some examples of the different types of accounting. One of them made me just shake my head.
The ledger example is for recording income received and money spent for tenant and household-related expenses.
This line is what made me pause, the author has it labeled for the year 1800:
Agreed this day with R. S. to accept as a compensation for a heriot due at the death of his father…………… £26 5
I admit I had to look up “heriot”
her·i·ot
noun
British historical
noun: heriot; plural noun: heriots
- a tribute paid to a lord out of the belongings of a tenant who died, often consisting of a live animal or, originally, military equipment that he had been lent during his lifetime.
Right. Even if this is only a made up example and not drawn from an actual example, (which I think it is since the author says he got examples from his own work and others), it’s not something I’ve run across in any of my previous research in the Regency.
R.S’s father died, and he has to pay Lord Soandso £26 5. Sigh.
Also interesting is that J.B paid half a year’s rent of £79.5 and D.S paid a full year at £125
J.S. Sadler was paid the full amount of his bill £19.10 as was P.A. Smith in the amount of £21.5
The Groom was paid expenses of £4.3.11
I just paged forward, there are several examples, plainly drawn from documents lent to him, that mention heriots:
Received of (J. D. a composition for three heriots, instead of his three best beasts or goods, due at the death of his father E. D
There are many of them.
Trees were branded, and boy, they were quite profitable.
When an account of the timbers is taken, they may be marked with iron stamps, the rough part of the bark being taken off with the hatchet before the stamp is applied, that the impression may be made fair; and that it may be lasting, the stamp should go no deeper than the bark, but it may be renewed.
Then I came to a long rant about lazy poor people and how taking away the commons and giving them to “ingenious gentlemen” to rent back to the poors who would then be no longer lazy, and, well, I’ve had about enough of that kind of talk lately so I stopped reading.
