Exchequer - History of The Exchequer in England and Wales

History of The Exchequer in England and Wales

At an early stage in England (certainly by 1176, the 23rd year of the Reign of Henry II which is the date of the Dialogue concerning the Exchequer), the Exchequer was split into two components: the purely administrative Exchequer of Receipt, which collected revenue, and the judicial Exchequer of Pleas, a court concerned with the King's revenue.

According to the Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, an early medieval work describing the practice of the Exchequer, the Exchequer itself referred to the cloth laid across a large table, 10 feet by 5 feet (with a lip around the edge "4 fingers high"), upon which counters were placed representing various values. The name referred to the resemblance of the table to a chess board (French: échiquier).

The term "Exchequer" then came to refer to the twice yearly meetings held at Easter and Michaelmas, at which government financial business was transacted and an audit held of sheriffs' returns.

Under Henry I, the procedure adopted for the audit involved the Treasurer drawing up a summons to be sent to each Sheriff, which he was required to answer. The Treasurer called on each Sheriff to give an account of the income in his shire due from royal demesne lands and from the county farm. The Chancellor of the Exchequer then questioned him concerning debts owed by private individuals. The results of the audit were recorded in a series of records known as the Pipe Rolls. Until the 19th century, the records of the Exchequer were kept in the "Pell Office", adjacent to Westminster Hall. The office was so named after the skins (i.e., pelts) from which the rolls were made.

Read more about this topic:  Exchequer

Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, exchequer, england and/or wales:

    The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

    Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.
    —H.G. (Herbert George)

    I just come and talk to the plants, really—very important to talk to them, they respond I find.
    Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)