The gift or purchase of outlying estates and churches necessitated the appointment of officers to superintend their management and to be responsible for the due collection from them of rents and _pensions_. Moreover any particular extensions of the monastic buildings or church involved the appointment of a temporary _Warden of the New Work_ to account for the necessary receipts and expenditure. It was customary to assign particular estates to the support of particular departments or else to arrange for the equitable division of profits among them all. Thus each official had definite sources of income for his office and definite objects upon which that income was to be expended. Year by year he was required to submit for audit a roll or balance-sheet accounting for the monies of his department, and to many of these rolls were attached bills or subsidiary rolls of which the chief roll might contain but a summary. It is from the survival of such rolls that a knowledge of the internal economy of the monastery can be obtained, the duties of the various officials outlined, and the progress and cost of new buildings or repairs duly marked. At Westminster the number of such surviving rolls is over three thousand, and in addition there are many account-books exhibiting in the utmost detail the expenditure in certain of the departments. Exceptions to the general scheme must, however, be noted. At Westminster the precentor’s office had some small property in land attached to it and received some few pensions from churches, but the precentor himself kept no rolls, for his income and expenditure were small, and his duties were not such as to call for much outlay of money. The adult portion of his Secular Choir, the forerunners of the lay-vicars of the present day, were paid by contributions from the Sacrist and others, while the Subalmoner had the care of the Singing-children. The archdeacon’s duties were those of a legal rather than monastic character, and in consequence the history of his office is not to be found in monastic rolls. Similarly in the case of officers such as the prior and others, whose work was mainly that of supervision and discipline, little record survives, with the result that these are for the most part far more shadowy figures than the administrative officials. The latter seem oftentimes to live again by the human touches which creep unawares into what at first glance might seem to be dull and stereotyped records of receipts and expenditure, and to leave small room for the record of personality. When we have read through some pages of Brother Thomas Browne’s ill-written account-book, which in due course he must submit for the Abbot’s inspection, how shall we translate the homely hexameter which quite suddenly appears: _Si mea pena valet, melior mea litera fiet_? Brother Thomas becomes no such remote figure after all!