revenue was paid by tale, and for the determination of its
amount it was necessary to have copies of all grants made in the
chancery on which rents were reserved, or fines payable. These
were known first as contrabrevia and later as originalia; the
profits of justice were settled by the delivery of “estreats”
from the justices, while for certain minor casualties the oath of
the sheriff was at first the only security. At a later date many of
them were determined by copies of inquisitions sent in from the
chancery. All this business might be transacted anywhere in
England, and though convenience placed the exchequer first at
Winchester (where the treasury was), and afterwards usually
at Westminster, it held occasional sessions at other towns even
in the 14th century.
The Angevin exchequer, described by Richard the Treasurer, remained the ideal of the institution throughout its history, and the lineaments of the original exemplar were never completely effaced; but the rapid increase both of financial and judicial business led to a multiplication of machinery and a growing complexity of constitution. Even in the time of Henry II. we gather that the great officers of state, except the treasurer and chancellor, commonly attended by deputy. In the reign of Henry III. the chancellor had also ceased to attend, and his clerk acquired the title of chancellor of the exchequer. To the same period belongs the institution of the king’s and lord treasurer’s remembrancers. These at first had common duties and kept duplicate rolls, but by the ordinance of 1323 their functions were differentiated. Henceforward the king’s remembrancer was more particularly concerned with the casual, and the lord treasurer’s remembrancer with the fixed revenue. The former put all debts in charge, while the latter saw to their recovery when they had found their way on to the great roll. Hence the preliminary stages of each account, the receiving and registering of the king’s writs to the treasurer and barons, and the drawing up of all particulars of account, lay with the king’s remembrancer, and he retained the corresponding vouchers. The lord treasurer’s remembrancer exacted the “remanets” of such accounts as had been enrolled, as well as reserved rents and fixed revenue, and so became closely connected with the clerk of the pipe. Before the end of the 14th century these three offices had already crystallized into separate departments.
In the meantime the increasing length and variety of accounts, as well as the growth of judicial business, had led to various efforts at reform. As early as 22 Henry II. it became necessary to remove from the great roll the debts which it seemed hopeless to levy, and further ordinances to the same end were made by statute in 54 Henry III. and in 12 Edward I. By this last a special “exannual roll” was established in which the “desperate debts” were recorded, in order that the sheriff might be reminded of them yearly without their overloading the great roll. But the largest accession of financial business arose from the “foreign accounts,” that is to say, the accounts of national services, which did not naturally form part of the account of any county. These did not in the reign of Henry II. form a part of the exchequer business. Such expenses as appear on the pipe roll were paid by the sheriffs, or by the bailiffs of “honours”; payments out of the treasury itself would only appear on the receipt and issue rolls, and the “spending departments” probably drew their supplies from the camera curie, and not directly from the exchequer. In the course of the 13th century the exchequer gradually acquired partial control of these national accounts. Even in 18 Henry II. there is an account for the forests of England, and soon the mint, the wardrobe and the escheators followed. The undated statute of the exchequer (probably about 1276) provides for escheators, the earldom of Chester, the Channel Islands, the customs and the wardrobe. During the reign of Edward I., the wardrobe account became unmanageable, since it not only financed the household, army, navy and diplomatic service, but raised money on the customs independently of the exchequer. The reform of 1323–1326, due to Walter de Stapledon, in remedying this state of things, greatly increased the number of “foreign accounts” by making the great wardrobe (the storekeeping department), the butler, purveyors, keepers of horses or of the stud, the clerk of the “hamper” of the chancery (who took the fees for the great seal), and the various ambassadors, directly accountable to the exchequer. At the same time the sheriffs’ accounts were expedited by the further simplification of the great roll, and by appointing a special officer, the “foreign apposer,” to take the account of the “green wax,” or estreats, so that two accounts could go on at once. Another baron (the 5th or cursitor baron) was appointed, and the whole business of foreign accounts was transferred to a separate building where one baron and certain auditors spent their whole time in settling the balances due on the accounts already mentioned, as well as those of castles, &c., not let to farm, Wales, Gascony, Ireland, aids (clerical and lay), temporalities of vacant bishoprics, abbeys, priories and dignities, mines of silver and tin, ulnage and so forth. These balances were accounted for in the exchequer itself, and entered on the pipe roll, but the preliminary accounts were filed by the king’s remembrancer, and enrolled separately by the treasurer’s remembrancer as a supplement to the pipe roll.
The next important change, about the end of the 15th century, was the gradual substitution of special auditors appointed by the crown, known as the auditors of the prests (the predecessors of the commissioners for auditing public accounts), for the auditors of the exchequer. Accounts when passed by them were presented in duplicate and “declared” before the treasurer, under-treasurer and chancellor. Of the two copies, one, on paper, was retained by the auditors, the other, on parchment, was successively enrolled by the king’s and lord treasurer’s remembrancers, and finally by the clerk of the pipe, to secure the levying of any “remanets” or “supers” by process of the exchequer.
Besides the two great difficulties of the postponement of financial to legal business, and of preventing the sheriffs from exacting the same debt twice, the exchequer was, as has been seen, hampered in its functions by the interference of other departments in financial matters. Its own branches even acquired a certain independence. The exchequer of the Jews, which came to an end in 18 Edward I., was such a branch. In 27 Henry VIII. the court of augmentations was established to deal with forfeited lands of monasteries. This was followed in 32 & 33 Henry VIII. by the courts of first-fruits and tenths and of general surveyors. These were reabsorbed by the exchequer in 1 Mary, but remained as separate departments within it. But the development of the treasury, which succeeded to the functions of the camera curie or the king’s chamber, ultimately reduced the administrative functions of the exchequer to unimportance, and the audit office took over its duties with regard to public accounts. So that when the statute of 3 & 4 William IV. cap. 99, removed the sheriff’s accounts also from its competence, and brought to an end the series of pipe rolls which begins in 1130, the ancient exchequer may be said to have come to an end. (C. J.)
In 1834 an act was passed abolishing the old offices of the exchequer, and creating a new exchequer under a comptroller-general, the detailed business of payments formerly made at the exchequer being transferred to the paymaster-general, whose office was further enlarged in 1836 and 1848. And in 1866, as the result of a select committee reporting unfavourably on the system of exchequer control as established in 1834, the exchequer was abolished altogether as a distinct department of state, and a new exchequer and audit department established.
The ancient term exchequer now survives mainly as the official title of the national banking account of the United Kingdom. This central account is commonly called the exchequer, and its statutory title is “His Majesty’s Exchequer.” It may also be described with statutory authority as “The Account of the Consolidated Fund of Great Britain and Ireland.” This account is, in fact, divided between the Banks of England and Ireland. At the head office of each of these institutions receipts are accepted and payments made on account of the exchequer; but in published documents the two accounts are
