Financial Literacy in Medieval London: Tracking Auditors and Audit Practices with Prosopography

Accounts as financial records have received significant attention from medieval scholars because of the light they shed on the types of revenues collected and expenses incurred by institutions, as well as individuals. Scholars have focused primarily on institutional accounts, which survive in greater numbers than accounts of merchants or households, and which provide valuable evidence for understanding the relationship between accountability and public authority, a crucial issue in state formation. Although recent scholarly work has expanded this focus by concentrating on how accounting practices and accountability operated across a wider variety of institutions and regions, particularly in the later middle ages, studies of accountability for medieval England still focus heavily on governmental developments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This paper takes a different approach to understanding developments in medieval accountability by concentrating on the auditing process and the men who conducted audits for the London Bridge House, a civic institution which collected tolls and rents from properties owned by the London Bridge estate. This study covers developments in the 120-year period from 1381 (the first extant account) to 1511. Evidence of auditing practices appears not only in the accounts, but in the London Letter Books, which record important deliberations of the Common Council, proclamations by the mayor and alderman, ordinances, litigation of special interest to the city, and elections to civic office, including the two bridge wardens and six auditors chosen each year.

This study also draws on a list of all known men who held the two offices of bridge warden and bridge auditor in order to focus on the financial literacy required by the bridge wardens and auditors to manage what was one of the largest and continuously operated built structures controlled by civic authorities in medieval England.