From the twelfth century onwards, a new culture of accountability spread throughout North-western Europe. Embedded within an ever growing body of written administrations and governmental...Show moreFrom the twelfth century onwards, a new culture of accountability spread throughout North-western Europe. Embedded within an ever growing body of written administrations and governmental bureaucracies, these novel accounting techniques reshaped relations between princes and their officials. This thesis describes this development in a comparative perspective through the study of the Scottish Exchequer and the Audit Chamber of Holland between 1477 and 1515. Comparing two peripheral areas on the fringes of the English and French cultural spheres of influence allows to re-evaluate persisting views of an inefficient and archaic Scottish Exchequer, as opposed to the 'Weberian ideal' of the Burgundian bureaucracy. Recent historiography shows that Scottish institutions in this period were different rather than backward when compared to their English 'big brother'. This appears to be as true for Scotland's auditing organisation as for the rest of its government. Both institutions primarily had a fiscal goal: the controlling of accounts, written financial records produced by accountable officials on both sides of the North Sea. Archival and judicial tasks supported this auditing process. Through a study of the format of important series of these accounts as well as their marginalia, it has been revealed that the daily practices surrounding the auditing process in Scotland and Holland showed important similarities. Notwithstanding this common ground, for a long time the audits and annotations in Holland seem to have been more elaborate than their Scottish counterparts. The latter show a clear development during the reign of James IV, making this a time of rather important innovations in Scotland. At the same time, consolidation rather than innovation could be observed in Holland. Ultimately, the central goal of all these auditing proceedings was the preservation of the royal or princely domain, in order to strengthen the government's financial position. Auditors in both Scotland and Holland possessed important tasks in the management- and assignation of individual domain goods, as well as judicial capacities that allowed them to enforce their authority upon minor accountable officials throughout the country. Through their work, the new written culture of probative accountability spread out over the country, becoming a daily reality for all that worked in any governmental position in either Scotland or Holland.Show less
