Debtors, Creditors and Financial Management

Abstract

Durham Cathedral Priory was ranked amongst the wealthier Benedictine houses of England. McKisack for example, quoted annual receipts of over £3,000 in the Durham bursar’s rolls alone for 1293, 1295 and 1297.¹ At first sight it might seem that such substantial levels of income would preclude any solvency concerns or cash management issues. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show occasionally lower, but still substantial, levels of expected receipts averaging £2,988 in the period 1278–1417 and £2,308 in the period 1420–1537, both levels comfortably in excess of the pension of £2,000 granted by Edward III to Edward Balliol in 1356 for the resignation of the Kingdom of Scotland.² It might seem surprising then to find so many references to the indebted position of the house. In 1309, following the death of Prior Richard de Hoton, and in the wake of the expensive dispute with the bishop, the house was described as ‘damaged in many [ways], firstly from great borrowing’.³ In 1344 the house was oppressed by a ‘load of debts’, and in 1405 it was reported that the ‘goods, rents and incomes…. have been so notoriously wasted that they no longer suffice to pay the usual debts and support the convent in all its necessities’.⁴ No matter the scale of the receipts, it is the level of expenditure in comparison which decides whether an institution generates a healthy cash surplus or develops an indebted position. The overwhelming bulk of the priory’s income depended on agricultural returns, and the impact of livestock and human disease and poor harvests could render incomes extremely volatile.