Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/38

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34
THE PUBLIC RECORDS

mentioned in the Act, and, if so, the Clerks of Works were subordinate to the Surveyors of Crown Lands.

Coming down to the time of Henry VIII, we find that 'General Surveyors and Approvers' of the King's Lands were appointed, and that their functions extended to the repair of old buildings and the erection of new. In the thirty-third year of his reign there was constituted a Court of the King's General Surveyors of the King's Lands, and the Receivers belonging to this Court were to 'survey all manner of reparations needful to be done'.

The Court was soon abolished, but there probably continued to be Surveyors, with functions similar to those enjoyed by the General Surveyors and Approvers of the King's Lands before it was erected, until the time of the Commonwealth.

Shortly after the Restoration there appears His Majesty's Surveyor-General of Works, and at the beginning of the reign of George I there was a Board of Works consisting of a Surveyor, a Comptroller, and a Paymaster of His Majesty's Works, of the Secretaries of the Treasury, of the Surveyor-General of Crown Lands, and of the Surveyor-General of Woods. Thus we see the Surveyors of Lands and Woods still associated with the direction of Works, but not quite in the same way as before.

In the time of George III, at the beginning of whose reign the land revenues of the Crown were surrendered to the nation in consideration of the fixed income commonly called the Civil List, there were still several Surveyors-General, though it has not been found practicable to indicate them all upon the plan. There was a Board of Works, with a Surveyor-General at the head of it, and, among other officers, a Comptroller, a Paymaster, and Clerks of the Works. Some changes were effected by statutes, and in the outcome there was an independent Surveyor-General of Works and Public Buildings. There continued, however, to be a Surveyor-General of