Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 2 (2006), p. 344

This set of accounts for Macclesfield manor and hundred in 1361–2 combines the accounts of a number of officers of the manor and hundred for the accounting year. The officers, including the bailiff of the forest, a parker, reeves and stock-keepers, report on a range of activities all of which are, in some form and variety, familiar from medieval accounts of this and similar kind. It is most especially in the stock-keeper’s accounts, as the editor, P.H.W.Booth, reminds us, that the particular interest of these accounts lies, since at this point in its history the lordship of Macclesfield, held by the Black Prince, was closely managed in relation to cattle breeding, a significant enterprise in this period. Thus, most especially in the stock-keeper’s money and stock accounts, we are presented with a considerable degree of detail regarding, inter alia, the breeding, husbandry and marketing of the lordship’s live- and deadstock. The accounts are presented in Latin with facing translation and are accompanied by a detailed introduction. The present edition is one part of a larger campaign by the editor, who has written extensively on the lordship and the county of Chester in the fourteenth century, to publish a range of material, and especially accounting material, relevant to the region and to the lordship, cross-reference to which is frequently made in this edition.

In the introduction, Booth details the descent of the manor and its administrative structures. In the fullest section of the introduction the editor also closely discusses what he terms ‘the Macclesfield cattle enterprise’. He locks horns with earlier interpretations of the history and significance of livestock husbandry in the region, which he largely dismisses as ‘uncritical’, and offers a detailed assessment of the rise and decline of the ‘enterprise’, together with comment on a range of associated issues, including marketing, the costs of labour, the pasturing of the livestock, and dairying. Booth also describes the relatively limited profits arising from the livestock venture, where, although prices moved according to national trend, the actual prices were relatively low. In 1376, according to Booth, the concentration on cattle husbandry appears to have been abandoned. The editor speculates that the costs relative to profits, and especially labour costs, were a determining factor but he also considers the possibility that poor weather, and its concomitant effects on a hay harvest, may have had its part to play.

The volume is supported by figures illustrating a number of the significant trends outlined in the introduction, maps of the region and of conjectural sites for the vaccaries, and an index. There are two appendices, one usefully summarizing the ‘cattle enterprise’ data extracted from the accounts from 1353 to 1376, the other, rather more idiosyncratically, adding some further observations and associated commentaries on the ‘Great rebellion of Cheshire of 1353’, an ‘event’ relevant to the history of the lordship and also discussed in an set of published accounts edited by Booth.

A developing interest in ‘decision-making in agriculture’ and most especially the calculations of seigneurial management of husbandry, evident in the work of Campbell, Stone and others, will ensure that this volume will be of benefit to researchers in these areas, as well as those primarily interested in the late medieval history of the region.