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Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale is a satire of late medieval mercantile culture, and it is replete with commercial and accounting language. Literary critics have examined some of the relevant commercial elements such as the influence of double entry bookkeeping and the operations of late medieval foreign exchange markets. This paper introduces the tale to accounting historians by reviewing the literature that examines the business and accounting elements. A review of the critical studies helps us avoid misreading the tale and, thus, distorting inferences about the role of the merchant and his practices in medieval society. There are, however, a number of instances where critics may have misread the tale because of inadequate understanding of accounting and accounting history. Also, we find critics’ descriptions of accounting and business practices to be less efficient and precise than the sources upon which they relied. We conclude that literary critics would benefit from collaboration with an accounting historian when making inferences about technical issues. Further, accounting historians will benefit as well from collaboration with the appropriate literature specialist when attempting to analyze a piece of literature as history.

The enormous changes of recent years in the food and drink processed and marketed for our consumption has made certain that the law of the sale of food and drugs, despite its history of a hundred years, will not remain static. One would think that everything that could be interpreted and defined had been so long ago, but the law is dynamic; it is growing all the time. The statutes, at the time of their coming into operation, seem to provide for almost every contingency, yet in a few years, the Courts have modified their effect, giving to clauses new meaning, and even making new law of them. It has always been so. The High Court of Justice not only interprets the law, but from time immemorial, Her Majesty's judges have been making law. Long before Parliament became a statute‐making body, with the legal capacity to “change a man into a woman,” and the supreme court of the land, judges were making the law—the Common Law of England, which settlers during the centuries have taken to the four quarters of the world, where it has invariably grown lustily. Decisions of the Supreme Courts of these newer countries, are accepted as case law here and legal principles evolved from them have returned to enrich the law of the old country.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).