To avoid overburdening the text, changes in tenants' names have normally
been omitted, though I have noted how many names of virgaters and half-virgaters
have changed in each custumal. Where there were considerable changes in the less
stable cottar population, all versions have been printed in full.

The accounts begin in 1289 with a document unique among the existing records
of Bec. This is a pipe roll, ¹ the only central financial record to survive. Unfor-
tunately it is incomplete, consisting of only four membranes with stitching for
another; but at least it contains the accounts of sixteen manors enrolled in an
abbreviated form after the audit of October-December 1289. It is a fair copy,
written in a single hand with only one or two corrections, and probably based on
rougher records of some kind; but there is no evidence to show whether at this date
there were separate accounts for individual manors. Account was rendered to the
chief steward, William of Harden, who on this occasion at least went on circuit round
the manors, holding courts and auditing accounts at the same time. His itinerary
can be reconstructed from the pipe roll and court roll for 1289-90: ²

Later evidence points to the centralization of the audit at Ruislip in the fourteenth

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