Kapitel 5: Chapter 5

Rickard Flint was trying to come up with a format for the census. It needed to be simple yet needed to accommodate all the important information. The problem then, to decide which information is important which were not. He asked various officials about their opinions about it. Each vassal had their own opinion and it was different for each of them. Tax collector wished to know everyone's income, their land size. Vassal in-charge of granary wished know total number of people, vassal in-charge of military recruitment wished to know how many young men he could get. Satisfying all these request at once couldn't be done or if it could be done Rickard wasn't able to think of way to do it.

To simplify the census, Rickard decided to shrink the scope and start small. He would start with not the castle as a whole but his own house. Although his house could be called mansion in modern times. He decided to give all houses in the castle unique numbers. As the lord's house and with all the authority he decided his house would be assigned number 1. Castle didn't only have houses or mansions, He decided thusly categories of various other numbers. This primitive census only collected name of the head of the house, number of people living in it, and it's address. He also decided to add main occupation the house dealt with. In this medieval era it was very rare to have father being farmer and son being blacksmith. This would suffice for the first census. Rickard's wish was to refine the information collected in subsequent census.

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He called the two scribes assigned to him by the lady of the castle. They were named Dan and Tom. He told them "Dan, Tom, Come here. I will explain to you how to do this census. What to ask and wjat should be written down." while signaling them to xome to the table. Dan and Tom scurried beside the table and stared intensely at the parchment in the Young Lord's hand.

Rickars continued "I have devised this house number as a means to differentiate between all the houses in the same streets, shops will have shop numbers and so on. If a shop has attached house or vice-versa; you must give them a shop number. House number is reserved if it is only house and not being used for any other purpose. You also enquire about the name of the head of the house and how many people live in that house and what is they do daily. If it is a shop you should ask whether all the people are employed are from the same family, if not how many are them are not family members and total number of employees that shop has. We will be starting from my house.

In this House number column record it as 1. Below that write down the address. Below that write Laina Flint as the head of the house and occupation as The Lord. Come, ask our head butler how many people live here and ask him to show all of them. You should double check the number given. After all these things are done strike through all the irrelevant fields. "

As Rickard explained scribes followed his instructions and carried out it perfectly.

After they completed, Rickard told them " Do this with all other houses in the castle. "

This took two weeks Dan and Tom to carry it out. After they were completed amount of information collected were expanded. This expanded census took two months to carry it out.

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287 AC

At the new year's eve of 287 AC, census of the Flint's Finger castle was completed. The census was put forth the lady of the castle, Laina Flint.

In the hall of the Flint's Finger castle Rickard was reporting his completed census of the castle. He wished to show his census would be helpful in the governance of the fief. So he started make his case before the court.

"My lady, I have completed the census of the castle. There are total of 1500 residents live inside. People who don't live in the castle but work here are not included in this total. There are total 60 houses in the castle. 10 Smithy and 20 other miscellaneous labor establishments are present in the castle. We have 100 men-at-arms and 10 knights. 240 people directly work for our house and another 743 works for our vassals."

Lady Laina spoke "It is indeed quite detailed. But what use will it be for us?"

Lucas Cantell, one of house Flint vassal, chimed in "My lady, We would know the number of smiths, jewelers, daily laborers from this data. This would help us increasing the type of artisans we need to recruit. For example, we only have 10 blacksmiths in our castle. They need to fix farming equipment, create new farming equipments and cfeate and repair weapons and armour. And they need to do this to all the castle's inhabitants and surrounding people. So, we have shortage of blacksmiths. This will help us to get more blacksmiths before things get too out of hand. We can know each and everyone's occupation and promote those or give preferences to the one's we need. "

Rickard nodded approvingly "We can also know how much farmers there are in our fief, how much field they each have. We can rent some field to the farmers if we have excess land available. If we can able to increase our food production we no longer have need for winter hunt."

Hearing that no longer the people of her fiefdom need to brave the dangerous winter hunt and not loose their loved ones in it, Laina Flint made up her mind and agreed for the full scale census to take place.

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Year 287 AC while was very prosperous for the realms of man, as it was after the mad king was defeated, Rickard Flint was busy in making sure census was carried out in appropriate manner. Now, he had the full support from his mother he would get more scribes from the house to carry out the census. Even then he got only 3 more scribes. So he needed to train more scribes. This year would be one where his Organisational skills were tested to his utmist limit