Cely shipping accounts: Accountability and the transition from oral to written records, The

Accounting Historians Journal, The, Dec 1995 by Hooper, Keith

The Cely accounts were meant to serve only internal purposes, but the nature of those purposes is open to question. Certainly, the accounts served to record receipts and payments and settle differences between partners. Also, accountability was essential in a shipping partnership where control was often indirect. Merchants in more traditional, domestic trades would have enjoyed more direct control and have acquired from experience a shrewd estimate of the likely receipts and payments involved. In the traditional domestic trades illiterate merchants could flourish without written records. Written accounts allowed the partners to exercise more control over distant agents and permitted greater degree of accountability among the partners. Noke

1981, p. 138

maintains, refening to manorial accounts, that it was likely that estate administrators realised the advantage of written accounts both as a source of data for forward planning and, more importantly, as an aid to control. These aspects of written accounting were also significant to the growing number of new shipping partnerships engaged in overseas trades which could yield unpredictable results.

Clancy

1979

comments, however, on the difficulty of making the transition from oral to written reporting. Fourteenth century people, he argues, were reluctant to attach more weight to documentary, as opposed to oral evidence, and this reluctance was probably still applicable in 1486. With regard to written accounts of land transactions Clancy wrote:

The writing was of secondary importance, and was hedged about with repetitious clauses, because less confidence was placed in it than in oaths and public ceremonies which had traditionally sanctioned conveyances.

p.232

The repetition referred by Clancy is a noticeable feature of the Cely accounts. The hedging about with repetitious clauses so conspicuous in the accounts draws attention to certain transactions and in an oral tradition the equivalent transactions would have been the focus of elaborate oaths and ceremonies.

THE CELY ACCOUNTS AND THE FIRST BORDEAUX VOYAGE OF 1486-87

The Margaret Cely's first voyage to Bordeax was in the autumn of 1486. The voyage ended when the ship returned to London in March 1487. The financial accounts of this voyage are nearly complete, certainly more so than the accounts referring to the subsequent Cely shipping ventures. The accounts cited are the separate written records of John Speryng, George Cely, and William Aldereche together with a final accounting summary by George Cely. The accounts concern the return leg of the Bordeaux voyage and are organised into four sections

I to IV

.

1. John Speryng's account of the return voyage

John Speryng joined the 'Margaret Cely' in France for the return voyage. He had been entrusted to handle family funds and buy wine on behalf of the Cely family. In August of 1486, George Cely wrote, "Y sent John Speryng my servant to Bordewys yn the Margett and Y delyuyrd hym to bewtowe there thesse parsellys ffollowyng"