West European Studies

When epic medieval tales are told and texts read, they are always heavy in the major issues concerning the subject and light in the common experience of the studied group of people and as such final analysis done in the modern world rarely gives the true picture. The texts on these middle Ages spanning the 5th Century to the 16th Century usually spin around the peak and the fall of the Roman Empire, territorial expansion of Europe powers and exploration of new hitherto unseen world (Pierre 29). Thus most historians will always query the wholesomeness of such texts. There are always the smaller details that are omitted and such vivid imagery is lost.

This essay paper will examine a period in a classical age of English renaissance period in the medieval period, focusing mainly on English city of Ipswich, located in the county of Suffolk, east of the country. The modern name is derived from its medieval age name of Gippeswick that is itself a corruption of the name River Gipping (Medieval English Urban History- Ipswich appendix 4).

In the period 144647, major medieval records have had minimal accounts of revenue and expenditure of the city of Ipswich other than the only two records available, a Manorial Accounts of a Medieval Rent Collector (Medieval English Urban History- Ipswich appendix 4). In this accounts we get an invaluable finer details of the nature of accounting and finance in the general people of Ipswich and therefore contextualize and contemporize the medieval age of whole of England.

When we think of the current economics equations that expenditure of a country equals its income, we realize from the accounts of the Manorial Accounts of a Medieval Rent Collector, that this economic equation was in existence even before the days of classical economists of the 18th Century like Adam Smith and the Keynesian Economic models of the 20th century. The Chamberlains accounts try to balance receipts with expenditure. The medieval people therefore had an advanced system of accounting and auditing for their receipts.

The fifteenth raw schedule for receipts shows the revenue from fines imposed on foreigners for their exemptions to pay custom and toll charges. These foreigners were not non English but fellow countrymen who happened to come from different parts of the country. We can therefore deduce that the medieval people had a close-knit community system and visitors into a certain town were required to pay a fine. Other than the normal taxation, people were also required to fund the welfare of their kings and rulers.

From both the revenue and expenditure schedules, it is observable that the medieval people had advanced justice system with courts, and each town had an attorney that was based at the local law courts. This was the place for arbitration of the various suits that the locals brought to the county.

In conclusion, we can acknowledge that inasmuch as we claim that the medieval ages were backwater like, it is from the records that these people were intelligent with advanced forms of life. Their finer detail of their day to day lives seems to have evolved more that most contemporary people seem to know or hear. Thus within the major stories and texts emanating from the Middle Ages, there is always a minor sub story and text that is often less said and it is such simple occurrences that themselves give wholesome pictures where there seems to be grey dots of ambiguity in history.