Professor Adrian Bell

Dr Adrian Bell

Chair in the History of Finance
Head of Pre-Experience Postgraduate Programmes
- Henley Business School

E: a.r.bell@icmacentre.ac.uk

T: +44 (0)118 378 6461

Specialisms: History of Finance, Football Finance

Biography

Adrian completed his first degree at the University of Hull and his MA and PhD at the University of Reading. He is Chair in the History of Finance and Head of Pre-Experience Postgraduate Programmes for Henley Business School. He is module convenor for the MSc module, Topics in the History of Finance and the BSc module Topics in Finance.

Adrian is interested in the history of finance and is working on a major project funded by the Leverhulme Trust with Professor Chris Brooks and Dr Tony Moore.  This three year project beginning in January 2012, will focus on medieval foreign exchange and more detail is available at http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/medievalfx/.  This project builds upon a previous major project for the ESRC with the same team which investigated the early and innovative use of credit finance by a succession of English medieval monarchs (https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/medievalcredit) and the earlier ESRC project entitled "Modern Finance in the Middle Ages? Advance contracts for the supply of wool'' (UK Data Archive, study number 5325: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/).

Professor Bell also specialises in the Hundred Years War and his book, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century, was published by Boydell and Brewer in Autumn 2004. In 2006 he was awarded a major grant from the AHRC (jointly with Professor Anne Curry, University of Southampton) to investigate "The Soldier in Later Medieval England" for more details see http://www.medievalsoldier.org/

His working papers are available on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/author=486048

Books

Accounts of the English Crown with Italian Merchant Societies, 1272-1345,
List and Index Society, Vol. 331 (2009)
Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony K. Moore

Synopsis
The credit arrangements between the three Edwards and Italian merchants were crucial for financing England’s ambitious foreign policies and ensuring the smooth running of governmental administration. The functioning of this credit system can be followed in detail through the well-kept but mostly unpublished records of the English Exchequer. This volume combines a transcription of the most important surviving accounts between the merchants and the Crown, with a parallel abstract presenting the core data in a double-entry format as credits to or debits from the king's account. This dual format was chosen to facilitate the interpretation of the source while still retaining the language and, as far as possible, the structure of the original documents. The wealth of evidence presented here has much value to add to our understanding of the financing of medieval government and the early development of banking services provided by Italian merchant societies. In particular, although the relationship between king and banker was, for the most part, mutually profitable, the English kings also acquired a reputation for defaulting on their debts and thus 'breaking' a succession of merchant societies. These documents provide an essential basis for a re-examination of the 'credit rating' of the medieval English Crown.

 

The English Wool Market c. 1230-1327,
Cambridge University Press (August, 2007)
Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh

ISBN-13: 9780521859417

Synopsis
The wool market was extremely important to the English medieval economy and wool dominated the English export trade from the late thirteenth century to its decline in the late fifteenth century. Wool was at the forefront of the establishment of England as a European political and economic power and this volume is the first study of the medieval wool market in over 20 years. It investigates in detail the scale and scope of advance contracts for the sale of wool; the majority of these agreements were formed between English monasteries and Italian merchants, and the book focuses on the data contained within them. The pricing structures and market efficiency of the agreements are examined, employing practices from modern finance. A detailed case study of the impact of entering into such agreements on medieval English monasteries is also presented, using the example of Pipewell Abbey in Northamptonshire.

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521859417

Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool c. 1265 - 1315,
List and Index Society, Vol. 315 (2006)

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh

A research project started in April 2004 with the aim of investigating the scale and scope of advance contracts for the sale of wool in the Middle Ages. It is widely believed by financial market practitioners that derivative instruments such as forward contracts and options are recent inventions. However an examination of the appropriate historical documents demonstrates the existence of quite sophisticated financial contracts much earlier - in England in the Middle Ages, where monasteries frequently sold their wool up to fifteen years in advance, to Italian merchants, for prices agreed on the date that the contract was signed.

This publication provides parallel original Latin/French and translated English versions of these contracts and a summary spreadsheet of the data contained within the contracts. This will be a unique volume, bringing such documentation of financial sophistication and knowledge of medieval wool production to a wide audience, both academic and public. The wealth of surviving evidence has much value to add to the current understanding of the medieval economy.

 

War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century,
The Boydell Press (November, 2004)

Adrian R. Bell

Little is known about the soldiers who fought in the Hundred Years War, though much about tactics and weapons. Adrian Bell's book redresses the balance: he explores the 'military community' through focusing on the records of the two royal expeditions led by Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, in 1387 and 1388, where the extensive surviving evidence makes it possible to identify those who served on these expeditions, and to follow their careers. These campaigns are not only interesting for the wealth and concentration of materials surviving on military organisation, but also because of the political background against which the expeditions were undertaken, which included the attack upon the favourites of the King in Parliament by the Lords Appellant and the possible temporary deposition of Richard II. Advances made in historical computing techniques have made possible for the first time such detailed analysis of the personnel of a royal army.

Website: http://www.boydell.co.uk/43831031.HTM

Grant

Medieval Foreign Exchange c.
1300-1500

 

The ICMA Centre has recently won a Research Project Grant worth almost £200,000 from the Leverhulme Trust for a three-year project beginning in January 2012 and entitled "Medieval Foreign Exchange c. 1300 - 1500" (grant number RPG-193). The research team, comprising Professor Adrian R Bell and Professor Chris Brooks, and Dr Tony Moore, will examine in detail the workings of the markets for foreign currency trade in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.   For more detail see: www.icmacentre.ac.uk/medievalfx

Credit Finance in the Middle Ages: Loans to the English Crown c. 1272-1340

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have awarded Dr Adrian Bell and Professor Chris Brooks a major research grant worth just over £350,000 to investigate the early and innovative use of credit finance by a succession of English medieval monarchs.  

The study will examine in detail the credit finance arrangements used by Edward I, II and III from both a historical perspective and also utilise the approaches and models developed recently for modern-day sovereign borrowings.  The project will employ one Research Assistant for three years, and the team will work on a number of publications as well as the production of the transcriptions and translations of many original sources

For more information see: https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/medievalcredit

The Soldier in later Medieval England: A major new AHRC research project

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded a Research Grant worth just under £500,000 to Dr Adrian Bell of the ICMA Centre and Professor Anne Curry of the University of Southampton to challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453.

The project has an innovative methodological approach and will be producing an on-line searchable resource for public use of immense value and interest to genealogists as well as social, political and military historians. The project will employ two Research Assistants for three years and also will offer one Doctoral Research Studentship and will begin work on 1st October 2006. The whole team will also work on a jointly authored book, conference papers, and articles.

For more information see: www.medievalsoldier.org

Modern Finance in the Middle Ages? Advance contracts for the supply of wool               

Dr Adrian Bell and Professor Chris Brooks were awarded £45,000 from the ESRC for a unique interdisciplinary project. Their research attempted to push back the boundaries for modern finance into the middle ages - by investigating forward contracts between Cistercian monasteries in England and Italian Merchant Banks during the later half of the thirteenth century. The monasteries frequently sold their wool up to ten years in advance for prices agreed on the date that the contract was signed. These contracts were written by hand and in medieval latin and have survived in governmental records, housed today in the National Archives at Kew. This was the first time that such contracts have been subjected to the rigours of the techniques of modern finance. Could it be that today's financial market whizkids have a thing or two to learn from their ecclesiastical predecessors? The project analysed how efficient these early financial markets were and also produced an edition of the sources to stimulate further research into this fascinating history.

Further details on the award and of the outputs can be found by looking at UK Data Archive, study number 5325: www.data-archive.ac.uk

Publications

Bell, A. (2011) English members of Philippe de Mézières' Order of the Passion. In: Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R. and Petkov, K. (eds.) Philippe de Mézières and his Age: Piety and Politics in the Fourteenth Century. The Medieval Mediterranean (91). Brill. ISBN 9789004211131 http://www.brill.nl/philippe-de-mezieres-and-his-age

Bell, A. R. The soldier, 'hadde he riden, no man ferre'. In: Bell, A. R., Curry, A., Chapman, A., King, A. and Simpkin, D. (eds.) The soldier experience in the fourteenth century (Boydell and Brewer, 2011). ISBN 9781843836742. http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewitem.asp?idproduct=13736

Bell, A. R., Curry, A., Chapman, A., King, A. and Simpkin, D., eds. The soldier experience in the fourteenth century (Boydell and Brewer, 2011). ISBN 9781843836742. http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewitem.asp?idproduct=13736

Curry A. and Bell A.R., eds., Journal of Medieval History: Waging War in the Fourteenth Century (Vol. 37, Issue 3, Autumn 2011) ISSN: 0304-4181 http://www.sciencedirect.com/

Curry, A. and Bell, A. R., eds. Soldiers, weapons & armies in the fifteenth century. Journal of Medieval Military History, 9. (Boydell and Brewer,2011)  ISBN 9781843836681. http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewitem.asp?idproduct=13706

Bell, A. R., Brooks, C., Matthews, D. and Sutcliffe, C. Over the moon or sick as a parrot? The effects of football results on a club's share price. Applied Economics, 44 (26) (2011) pp. 3435-3452. ISSN 1466-4283 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2011.577017  

Bell, A. R. and Dale, R. S. The Medieval pilgrimage business. Enterprise and Society, 12 (3) (2011) pp. 601-627. ISSN 1467-2235 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/es/khr014

Adrian R Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony K Moore, 'Credit Finance in Thirteenth-Century England: the Ricciardi of Lucca and Edward I, 1272-1294' in Janet Burton, Frederique Lachaud and Phillipp Schofield (eds.)  Thirteenth Century England, XIII (Boydell, 2011) http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13552  

Anne Curry, Adrian R. Bell, Andy King, and David Simpkin, 'New Regime, New Army? Henry IV's Scottish Expedition of 1400',  English Historical Review, vol. CXXV, No. 517 (December, 2010), pp. 1382-1413 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceq343  

Adrian R. Bell and Charles Sutcliffe, ‘Valuing medieval annuities: Were corrodies underpriced?', Explorations in Economic History, 47 (2010), pp. 142-157 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2009.07.002

Adrian R. Bell, 'Medieval Chroniclers as War Correspondents during the Hundred Years War: The Earl of Arundel's Naval Campaign of 1387', in Chris Given-Wilson (ed.) Fourteenth Century England, vol. VI (Boydell, 2010), pp. 171-184. http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=8788

Anne Curry, Adrian R Bell, Adam Chapman, Andy King and David Simpkin, 'Languages in the Military Profession in Later Medieval England' in Richard Ingham (ed.)  The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts (Boydell, 2010) http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=6801

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony K. Moore, Accounts of the English Crown with Italian Merchant Societies, 1272-1345, vol. 331, List and Index Society (2009)

Adrian R. Bell and Charles Sutcliffe, ‘Annuities: Lessons from the past and concerns for the future', Professional Investor (Winter, 2009), pp. 20-23. 

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, ‘Interest in medieval accounts: Examples from England, 1272-1340', History, vol. 94, no. 316 (October 2009), pp. 411-433 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2009.00464.x

Adrian R. Bell, Adam Chapman, Anne Curry, Andy King and David Simpkin  (interviewed by Daniel Cossins), ‘Medieval Soldiers online’, BBC Who do you think you Are? Magazine (April 2009).

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore (interviewed by Chris Bowlby), ‘What can history teach us about... the credit crunch?', BBC History Magazine, vol. 10, no. 1 (January 2009), pp. 18-19  

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Tony Moore, ‘Credit Crunch in the Middle Ages', The Historian: The Magazine of the Historical Association (Number 100, Winter 2008), pp. 6-13

Adrian R Bell, ‘The Fourteenth Century Soldier - more Chaucer's Knight or Medieval Career?' in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, edited by John France, Brill 2008, pp. 301-315. http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=73&mcid=2&pid=28414

Adrian R. Bell, Adam Chapman, Anne Curry, Andy King and David Simpkin, 'What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy? The Soldier in Later Medieval England', The Historian: The Magazine of the Historical Association, (Number 96, Winter 2007), pp.6-13. 

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh, The English Wool Market c. 1230-1327, Cambridge University Press (August, 2007) ISBN-13: 9780521859417

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks & Paul Dryburgh, ‘Interest Rates and Efficiency in Medieval Wool Forward Contracts', Journal of Banking and Finance, vol. 31, 2 (2007), pp. 361-380 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2006.04.006

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh, Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool c. 1265 - 1315, vol. 315, List and Index Society (2006)

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks & Paul Dryburgh, 'Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre': Wool, Debt and the Dispersal of Pipewell Abbey, 1280-1328,' Journal of Medieval History, vol. 32, no. 3 (September, 2006), pp. 187-211 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmedhist.2006.07.001

Adrian R. Bell, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century, The Boydell Press (2004), 
ISBN 1-84383-103-1

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh, ‘Why forwards really came from the past', Professional Investor (April 2005), pp. 21-26.

Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh, ‘Modern Finance in the Middle Ages? Advance Contracts with Cistercian abbeys for the supply of Wool c. 1270-1330: A summary of findings', Cîteaux : Commentarii cistercienses, vol. 55, fasc. 3-4 (2004), pp. 339-343.

Adrian R. Bell, ‘England and the Crusade of Nicopolis 1396’, Medieval Life: A New Magazine of the Middle Ages, Issue 4 (Spring 1996), pp. 18-22.

Over the Moon, or Sick as a Parrot? The Effect's of Football Results on a Clubs' Share Price
ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance 2009
with Chris Brooks, David Matthews and Charles Sutcliffe)

Interest in Medieval Accounts: Examples from England, 1272-1340
ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance 2008
(with Chris Brooks and Tony Moore)

Valuing Medieval Annuities: Were Corrodies Underpriced?
ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance 2007
(with Charles Sutcliffe)

Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre: Wool, Debt and the Dispersal of Pipewell Abbey (1280-1330)
ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance 2006 (2006)
(with Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh)

Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool in Medieval England: An Undeveloped and Inefficient Market?
ISMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance 2005 (2005)
(with Chris Brooks and Paul Dryburgh)