This essay will consider a negative aspect of market production: the losses caused by employee embezzlement or fraud. Between 1261 and 1268 Robert le Carpenter (Robert Carpenter II, 1230–1280), of ‘Hareslade’ (modern Haslett Farm) near Shorwell on the Isle of Wight, compiled a formulary, in Latin, containing a collection of form letters, legal texts and other model documents having to do with law and administration. Carpenter, who was probably a freeholder and a former bailiff of William de Insula, lord of the manor of Shorwell, copied into his holograph formulary many texts from other collections. However, he also added some original material, including detailed instructions for half a dozen ways in which a reeve, bailiff or shepherd could embezzle from his lord or commit some other kind of fraud. Sometime after 1283 Carpenter's eldest son, Robert Carpenter III (b. 1258), compiled his own formulary and included within it a copy of his father's text.

Carpenter's matter-of-fact instructions for how to commit fraud appear to be unique for medieval England. However, although both Noël Denholm-Young and Dorothea Oschinsky commented briefly on this portion of Carpenter's text, and Oschinsky published a transcription of it, to date no one has published a translation of these instructions or examined them in detail. This essay will investigate Carpenter's text, and will also explore the subject of employee fraud more generally, as reflected in prescriptive texts such as household regulations, instructions for manorial officers and other advice manuals, and in accounts of embezzlement cases.