Catalogue description Halland Estate accounts

Annual accounts of Abraham Baley with [Thomas Pelham], Lord Pelham, for the income and expenditure of the Halland Estate. A note by Baley at the beginning of the first volume (AMS 2132 below) explains that the accounts relate to the estates which formerly belonged to Thomas Pelham-Holles (1693-1768), Duke of Newcastle. They begin in the year after the duke's death and end in the year of Baley's death.

The income consists largely of the rents of tenants and the profits of manorial and hundredal jurisdictions, the expenditure allowances against rent to tenants for repairs and taxes, fees of stewards and attorneys and the wages and uniforms of servants, charitable contributions (including Lewes School).

The accounts are arranged by the calendar year. Against each entry is set the page of the ledger on which the item appears. Each year's account closes with a summary, showing the totals of income and expenditure for each farm. The accounts of most years are signed as approved by Thomas Pelham, usually at a date between 12 and 14 months after the closure of the account.

For the ledgers for the Halland Estate, in duplicate, 1764-1789, see BL Add MSS 33,338-40. For the destruction of other accounting records, see AMS 2132. For parallel accounts of income and expenditure and ledgers for the Stanmer estate, with duplicates, 1769-1789, see ACC 4600/96-102. For accounts of the Duke of Newcastle's estate between the appointment of Baley in 1763 and the duke's death in 1768, see BL Add MS 33166.

For Abraham Baley of Crowland in Lincolnshire, who replaced Christopher Coates as steward of the Duke of Newcastle's Sussex estates in 1765, see David Vaisey (ed), The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754-1765 (OUP 1984); for his letter-book, 1763-1773, see SAS/HA 310; for a copy of his will, see AMS 6326/149.

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