His Summing Book. May 9. 1759.

An attractive mathematical workbook, likely by Richard Beale Senior of Biddenden, Kent, who was born in 1744, making him about 15 when the volume was produced.

The Beale family obtained its wealth in textile manufacturing during the 17th century and owned a great deal of property around Biddenden; Richard Beale Sr. was the owner of River Hill Farm and, with no children of his own, bequeathed it to his nephew Richard on his death in 1814. Both men's pocket diaries, as well as Beale junior's mathematical workbook (the 'chicken in trousers manuscript') are in the collection of the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading.

The carefully written contents of this manuscript cover advanced mathematics emphasising the concerns of the landed gentry, primarily trade and farming. The text begins with compound multiplication and goes on to operations on numbers with decimals, interest and brokerage calculations, bartering, tarr and trett ('the allowances made to merchants in buying their goods'), currency exchange with information on the currencies of Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium and the Netherlands (the Spanish and United Provinces), alligation medial ('the compounding many simples into one mass'), and fractions.

132-leaf manuscript, approximately 185 filled pages, occasional small marks and spots to contents, slight abrasions or insect damage to the lower corners of leaves 1 and 7; contemporary parchment binding, manuscript title to upper board, bards warped with wear and splitting at the edges and with a strip of parchment lacking from the lower board, some other small marks and darkening of the parchment, very good condition.