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• Magna Carta Celebration, 1915. General Committee. Nominated In 1914.
• Introduction By H. E. Malden, M.A.
• Professor Wm. S. Mckechnie, Magna Carta (1215–1915). an Address Delivered On Its Seventh Centenary, to the Royal Historical Society and the Magna Carta Celebration Committee.
• Professor G. B. Adams, Innocent Iii and the Great Charter.
• J. H. Round, “barons” and “knights” In the Great Charter.
• Sir P. Vinogradoff, Magna Carta, C. 39. Nullus Liber Homo, Etc.
• Charles Howard Mcilwain, Magna Carta and Common Law.
• H. D. Hazeltine, the Influence of Magna Carta On American Constitutional Development.
• Prof. Rafael Altamira, Magna Carta and Spanish MediÆval Jurisprudence.
• Hilary Jenkinson, Financial Records of the Reign of King John.

FINANCIAL RECORDS OF THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.

By Hilary Jenkinson, F.S.A.

Introductory.The most superficial study makes it clear that finance played a part of extreme importance in the reign of King John; it is probably not too much to say, considering any of the great crises of his time, that had he commanded even adequate financial resources the other elements in the situation—the personal character of himself and those with whom he came in contact at home and abroad, political influences, national movements—would have worked out to a quite different end. His period, too, after long neglect, has in recent years received considerable attention. It is strange, therefore, that the existing Records which may be either directly ascribed to, or obviously associated with, his financial administration have been to a great extent left aside by historians. It is true that the primary executive instrument of his time was the Chancery and that the Chancery Records have nearly all1 been published for his reign with Introductions which, in some cases at least,2 still stand. But even the Chancery Records are comparatively unworked for the financial points—at any rate for the smaller ones—which they contain; partly, no doubt, because (it is the great lack of all the earlier Record publications) they have no subject index. The direct Records of Exchequer administration have, with two exceptions,1 been left severely alone. Here again there is an obvious reason in an obvious difficulty; the Pipe Rolls (the chief, though not the only, class of direct Exchequer Records for this reign) being so bulky that inquirers have doubtless despaired of making a just use of them.

It would be well if these records could be dealt with in print. Meanwhile the present anniversary The Object of the Present Paper. seems to offer an opportunity for the survey of such Exchequer Records of King John as remain to us. Having surveyed we may also do good work by endeavouring to place them. We have a good general summary of Exchequer procedure as it was in the twelfth century in the “Dialogus de Scaccario”;2 and we know, in outline at least, what the machinery of it was in the period which first gives us fairly complete manuscript remains of the various departments of Exchequer administration—say the early fourteenth century. It is obvious that the second of these states has grown out of the first, but obvious also that we cannot, without investigation, put down to mere expansion all the changes which we find; there might well have been some violent innovation. Now where do John’s Exchequer Records stand in relation to this expansion and, if they took place, to these innovations? The fact that the Chancery Rolls begin with his reign makes it peculiarly desirable to establish at this point some limit between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries in the matter also of the Exchequer.

Even so we have not exhausted the list of what may properly be considered preliminaries essential to the study by historians of John’s finances. All Administrations, perhaps everywhere, certainly in England, have been from the earliest date subject to the mysterious influence of the Legal Fiction; old forms, that is to say, because they were established and because they had legal sanction, have been adapted to violently new uses: two people play at going to law in order to transfer land with the greater security; the King makes out a receipt for money he has not received from A. in order to have a convenient substitute for cash with which himself to pay B. We have in fact to consider the Records of, for example, the annual Audit in the light of transactions which we know from other sources to have taken place, in order to settle the question whether the Pipe Roll at a given period represents what we should expect it to represent—a survey of the year’s income—or whether it is only partially this, or not this at all. Reversing the process we have to test, where possible, our knowledge of the alleged exaction of the King by its representation in Records. Does a statement that the King imposed a talliage of 20,000 marks mean that he obtained 20,000 marks? In the vast majority of cases administrative documents and narrative descriptions have not both survived for any given transaction in early mediæval times. But an examination of the cases where they have will furnish a criterion of value for the large number of cases where only the one or the other remains to us.

To deal with such problems as this is obviously beyond the scope of a single paper; indeed for the most part they must be left till greater facilities in the way of printed and indexed Records are available. At the same time, in view of the wide and unquestioning use which has been made of Chronicle statements, the point is worth raising. Meanwhile, we may attempt perhaps with some profit the survey of the wealth which remains to us; and to a certain extent the classification of the Records from the point of view of the part they played in the administration of the various departments.

For the purposes of a survey it will be convenient A survey of Exchequer processes, and Officials. to travel backwards. Briefly then to summarize what is well known, the financial documents which remain to us from the time when the “course of the Exchequer” was well established—say at the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century—are as follows. It may be premised that we are attempting only to deal with those officials who left us Records, i.e. direct Records of the particular processes they controlled; for example, we are to display an interest in the Chamberlains of the Receipt but not in the Tellers, important as the latter ultimately became.

To begin with the Exchequer of Audit. This is In the early Fourteenth Century. Audit. represented by the two departments of the King’s Remembrancer and the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. The latter’s department is that of final audit represented in Records by the Pipe Roll and the divisions which split off from it.1 The King’s Remembrancer’s department—that of preliminary audit—is represented in Records by a mass of vouchers of every shade of variety in point of officiality, provenance, and writing; and by some preliminary statements or summaries of Accounts—Compotuses compiled from the vouchers; these last are closely connected with the Enrolled Accounts mentioned above. All these are in origin part of the “Ancient Miscellanea of the Exchequer, K. R.,” and are represented now by a number of classes, principally those known collectively as “Exchequer Accounts”.

Memoranda. The supplementary, interim, or domestic affairs of the Upper Exchequer as a whole, the proceedings of the barons, their Minutes and Correspondence, are represented in the case of both these Remembrancers by a Memoranda Roll in which each of them had noted such of the proceedings as interested his department. In many cases the same information would appear in both rolls. These Memoranda are, of course, the distinctive Records of Remembrancers. At the time we are speaking of they are arrayed in definite divisions including the “Adventus Vicecomitum” and “Dies Dati” (showing the arrangements made for audit), the “Brevia Directa Baronibus” (a section of In-Letters), the “Status et Visus Compotorum,” the “Brevia Retornabilia” and “Irretornabilia” (Out-Letters), the “Precepta” (instructions for issue of writs of process), and a section in which private deeds are enrolled; and, most important of all, the very lengthy “Communia,” with various sub-sections, the chief of which is that of the “Recorda” of revenue cases which come up for decision before the barons. This last section is intimately connected with the origin of the separate Exchequer of Pleas; but precisely how intimately has not yet been settled.

Receipt and Issue. Behind or below this Exchequer of Audit, separate from but subject to it, is the Department of the Receipt, represented qua Officials by the Treasurer and the two Chamberlains or their Deputies.1 Speaking broadly, the duties of these three at the “Recepta” are the same, and they are represented in Records by The Ward-robe. either a common collection or a triplicate series. They record the operation of receipt by preserving counter-foils of receipts (the foils of tallies or “contratalee,” and eventually the stocks of the same when these come in after audit), and copies of the inscriptions of these tallies on rolls (Receipt Rolls): the operation of issue by preserving the original writs for issue, copies of these (Liberate Rolls1 ) or notes of them (Issue Rolls).

Besides the “Recepta” there is another office where receipt and issue go on. When the differentiation of the Exchequer from the “Curia” was complete the result was an elimination of any personal control by the Monarch. The same thing occurred in the departmentalization of the Chancellor, who, with his staff, controlled the Great Seal. In each case the result was the same; under the older Official, or rather body of Officials, there grew up an Official or an Office closely resembling it in functions, and to some extent in methods, but controlled, as itself had originally been, directly by the Sovereign. At its weakest the new body acted as a link between the older one and the King; at its strongest it usurped in his behalf the authority of its prototype. The departmentalization of the “Curia,” in fact, brought into existence the “Camera,” the household grew up as an administrative organ, beneath the Court. Thus below the process of the Great Seal, preliminary or subsidiary to it, we have that of the Privy Seal; and presently below this in its turn the Signet. Similarly,2 below the Exchequer (Upper and Lower, Auditing Body and Receipt) we have financial functionaries of a less official character; notably we have, well established long before the fourteenth century, the Wardrobe; taking upon itself to a greater or less extent, according to the relative strength of King and Ministers for the time being, the function of receiving and, more particularly, of spending the King’s money. Of the activities of the Officials of the Wardrobe record is preserved to us in the shape of a regular series of Accounts, with quantities of attendant vouchers, among the Records of the King’s Remembrancer.

The Chancery. Apart from the direct operations thus recorded at the two departments of the Upper Exchequer, at the Receipt, and at the Wardrobe, Record is preserved at the Chancery of the part played by that Executive in originating active financial operations. Writs for Issues and those concerned with the audit process (writs of account, allowance, pardon, etc.), are preserved in copies made as they issue from the Chancery; we have in particular the Chancery Liberate Rolls. Besides these many other letters under the Great Seal must necessarily concern the Exchequer either directly by causing payments in or out,1 or indirectly by modifying the property in respect of which audit takes place. As these letters, unlike the writs mentioned above, are not directed to Exchequer Officials, copies or notes of them extracted from the Chancery Enrolments must be sent over to the Exchequer; where they are preserved in the shape of “Originalia” or Chancery Estreats.

Judicial Records. Finally, we must give a word in passing to another class of non-Exchequer Records, the rolls of the Justices; full of subjects so interesting to the Exchequer as amercements. As these were preserved at the Treasury of the Exchequer they were presumably available there for reference; but Estreats were also prepared from them, whether by the Justices or the Exchequer Officials, for the information of the Exchequer and its Accounting Officers.

It is to be noted that all the operations which lie at the base of the classes of documents we have touched on are simple ones, which, in a primitive form at least, are going on in the earliest times at which we have details of the organized finance in the King’s Courts. To return now to these earliest times.

In the time of the “Dialogus” we have an Upper In the time of the “Dialogus”. Upper Exchequer and Pipe Roll. Exchequer represented in Records by the Pipe Roll, the form of which (a fact confirmed by existing rolls), is essentially the same as that we find later. It is written, we are told, by the Treasurer’s scribe from his dictation at the actual time of Audit; and at the same time a copy is taken by the Chancellor’s scribe for the Chancellor.1 We may add for completeness a reference to the existing rolls and their publications by the Pipe Roll Society.

There is evidence of the production of original writs Vouchers. of pardon or allowance at audit time by the Accountant; and of their preservation by the Marshal.2

At the “Recepta” the Officials are the same as The Lower Exchequer. Tallies and Words. we find there later. The Tallies given out as acknowledgments of sums paid in are also practically the same,3 and the foils, and subsequently the stocks, are preserved in like manner. The writing on them is done by the Treasurer’s clerk.4 The same Official also ’deputat scripto” the sums received; possibly this is a reference to the “rotulo receptarum” which is also mentioned.5

Payment out is already dependent on a writ of “Liberate” from the Chancery, which the Officials of the Receipt preserve after it has been honoured.1 Two examples of the Henry II period have survived.2

The Norman Exchequer. Before going any further we may interpolate here some remarks about the separate financial administration of Normandy—an administration which, of course, was not in existence, so far as concerns this country, at the later date we have been discussing. Stapleton,3 who edited the rolls of this Norman Exchequer for the Society of Antiquaries, quoting allusions made in the “Dialogus” to this “Scaccarium transmarinum,” discredits the suggestion4 that the English system was based on the Norman, a position taken also by most modern writers;5 but makes it clear that there was a separate Norman “thesaurus” in 1131:6 and the balance of opinion seems to be in favour of accepting the fact of a “Scaccarium” in session in Normandy as early as 1171.7 It is to be noted that the “Dialogus” expressly describes this overseas Exchequer as essentially different from the English one; and Prof. Powicke8 in describing its functions is, of course, noting some functions and fashions which are certainly not English. The surviving rolls go back to 1184.

It is further to be noted that in the time of the The “Camera”. “Dialogus” we have already allusions to financial transactions carried on by some machinery other than that of the “Scaccarium” and “Recepta“—by the “Camera” in fact—both in England1 and in Normandy.2

In the Chancery, it appears from the “Dialogus,” The Chancery. the Chancellor’s clerk keeps a “rescriptum,”33 otherwise called “contrabrevia,” of the writs of Liberate, pardon, and allowance issued; and these “contrabrevia” may apparently be produced at the Exchequer Board at Audit just as the “contratalee” are produced for checking purposes by the Officials of the Receipt.

Turning to Judicial Records we find that the Judicial. “Dialogus” supplies no evidence of the existence of Plea Rolls in its time (the earliest which have survived are of the reign of Richard I): but it is clear that information concerning amercements imposed is furnished by the Justices.

Now it will be noticed, as one compares the twelfth Gaps in the Exchequer of the “Dialogus”. with the fourteenth century, that we have here certain large gaps. At the Receipt we have seen nothing of any “Issue” or “Liberate Roll”. In the Chancery there is no preparation of Originalia, though the “Rescriptum” or “Contrabrevia” seem to be used for the same purpose. Finally, we have said nothing, so far, in relation to the twelfth century, of the Remembrancers and of their most distinctive Records, the “Memoranda”. I have mentioned these last because we have here a matter which needs rather more detailed discussion.

Memoranda and the Remembrancers. It is clear, of course, that in the time of the “Dialogus” the business of Audit was not divided up into the preliminary and final department of the King’s Remembrancer and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer or any two Officials under other names. But that does not mean necessarily that there were not at that date Remembrancers, or at any rate some Officials whose successors ultimately became Remembrancers. Moreover, we have yet to mention two more Officers whom the “Dialogus” does chronicle, with their Records—Master Thomas Brown and the Archdeacon of Poitou, Richard of Ilchester, for a short time Seneschal of Normandy.

The Theory of Thomas Brown. These being two and unplaced in the Exchequer scheme of things, and the later Remembrancers, who are not mentioned in the “Dialogus,” being also two, it is naturally tempting to equate the pairs. Thus Dr. Poole “has long been accustomed to see (in Thomas Brown and Richard of Ilchester) the origin of the two Remembrancers who first appear by name under Henry III”.1 The position of both at the Exchequer Board is certainly anomalous. Of Thomas Brown we are told2 that at the Court of the Sicilian King, before he came over to that of Henry II, he was “in regis secretis pene praecipuus”; that at the English Exchequer he sits “in quarto scanno quod est oppositum Justiciario”;3 that he has a copy made from the Pipe Roll, or parts of it, at the same time as the Chancellor’s clerk makes the Chancellor’s counter-roll, his own clerk having a special seat given him that he may be able to discharge this duty;1 that he also has a clerk at the Receipt who2 “liberam habet facultatem scribendi...que recipiuntur et expenduntur”. Of the Archdeacon we are told3 that his clerk kept “rescripta” of the writs of summons which he used for the purpose of checking them when they were read out at the Audit; we are also given details of his place at the Board. As to the peculiarity of the position of these two Administrators—Thomas Brown’s privilege of keeping for his own use a third roll is “preter antiquam consuetudinem,” while the Archdeacon’s position is4 “ex officio quidem set ex novella constitutione”. In the case of this last passage a variant reading would tell us that he sits “non ex officio”. The first of the above remarks seems to me to show that Thomas Brown’s position was “ad hoc,” created not for an office which he filled at the moment but for him. Taking this view I should he disposed to accept the “non” in the second passage, though even without it the remark does not, I think, establish conclusively the officiality of the Archdeacon’s position at the Board: “ex novella constitutione” is elsewhere5 applied to Thomas Brown and is there explained as meaning “added by the present King”. At this point I come, with great diffidence, into conflict with the view which sees in these two the ancestors of the Remembrancers—officials, be it noted, who are not known to occur under that name before the reign of Henry III.1

The identification of the Archdeacon and the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer may here be left; it is a matter largely of taste, for it depends almost entirely upon the interpretation put upon the passage quoted above (though there is possibly some force in the fact that the Archdeacon is connected with the function of summons2 ), together with the fact that if Thomas Brown is the ancestor of the King’s Remembrancer, there seems really no reason why the Archdeacon should not foreshadow the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. If Thomas Brown’s suggested position be not substantiated then the similar suggestion for his contemporary rather falls to the ground.

Now as to Thomas Brown. Dr. Poole’s argument is3 that the words “quod oportet excipiat,” applied to his clerk, imply a selection of topics; and that the “regni iura regisque secreta” contained in his roll are “very nearly what the later Remembrancers wrote in their rolls”. In making this point Dr. Poole has to dismiss the statement that any errors made “in excipiendo” can easily be corrected by a comparison with the Chancellor’s and Pipe Rolls4 together with an important comment of “Discipulus” in this connection.5 This is difficult: and an even greater difficulty is that the same word “excipere” is applied to the work done by the Chancellor’s clerk who undoubtedly makes an exact copy from the work done by the Treasurer’s clerk.1 As to the word “secreta,” Dr. Poole2 has already explained its use in connection with Thomas Brown’s Sicilian experiences as referring to the “duana de secretis”; and there seems to be no difficulty here in explaining it either, as Prof. Haskins does, as a piece of mere magniloquence or as being borrowed by the writer of the “Dialogus” from his own previous description—the man who was great in the “secreta” of Sicily was great also in our English “secreta,” a piece of allusiveness quite in character.

Of course it may be argued that Brown did keep an exact copy but that, in spite of this, he was a Remembrancer. I confess I find it quite easy to suppose that a “restless experimenter,” to adopt Prof. Haskins’ description of Henry II, temporarily included special members in his Court of Exchequer in order to have the advantage of their advice, and in consideration of their financial experience, which was well known. Elsewhere3 I have tried to show that so early as the beginning of this King’s reign new revenue problems were making the conduct of the Audit upon the old lines by no means a simple matter. It is much more difficult, I think, to suppose a permanent change to have been made by revolutionary innovation at the Exchequer, where, as the “Dialogus” shows, the “ancient course”4 was already a shibboleth. Such changes are extremely rare in the whole of Exchequer history, and indeed in the whole of English administrative history: it is much easier to suppose1 that the Remembrancers were merely the evolution into a separate name and recognized office of the simple clerks of one of the original officers of the court; just as was the case with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (originally the Chancellor’s clerk) and the Clerk of the Pipe (Treasurer’s clerk) at the Upper Exchequer, the Clerk of the Pells (Treasurer’s clerk) at the Receipt, and other distinct officials in other courts.

Another Theory. This is perhaps again very much a matter of taste; but there are other arguments less open to that objection. The nature of the later Memoranda Rolls does not suggest that they originated in copies from the Pipe Rolls; they consist, in fact, largely of things which are not on the Pipe Roll. Again, neither of the later Remembrancers had any function at the Receipt; Thomas Brown kept a clerk there.2 Final and strongest argument against this derivation of the Remembrancers’ Office—the “Dialogus”3 actually mentions the making of Memoranda, and Memoranda of such a nature as we should expect; very little, it says, is written at the Easter Scaccarium: “tamen quedam memoranda que frequenter incidunt...seorsum tunc scribuntur ut soluto scaccario de hiis discernant maiores que quidem non facile propter numerosam sui multitudinem nisi scripto commendarentur occurrerent”. The volume of business has so increased that many matters (so many that they must be noted in writing) have to be reserved for discussion, so to speak, out of term. We shall have to return to this later. For the moment the interesting point is that this writing is done “a clerico thesaurarii”.

In treating, therefore, this section of Records, it is from this view of the Memoranda that we must start; that is from an expectation of finding in the Pipe Roll such a growing unwieldiness and confusion as would necessitate the regular making, not of extracts from it, but of notes of preliminary and interim matters which need not ultimately appear in the Pipe Roll at all; and from a parallel expectation of what, when we find them, the first Memoranda will be. So we may turn, after a rather long digression, to the actual Records of John.

Pipe Rolls.1 —These exist for every year except the Records of the reign of John. Exchequer. fifteenth and eighteenth, and fragments of the latter are made up in the roll of the seventeenth year. “Chancellor’s Rolls” exist for the third, fourth, seventh, tenth, thirteenth and seventeenth years; that for the third year was printed by the Record Commission. There is also a fragment in Exchequer K.R., Miscellanea, 1/6.

Memoranda.—Two rolls are definitely so called though they are not now numbered with the classes of that name; they are Exchequer L.T.R., Miscellaneous Rolls, 1/3 and 1/4.

Vouchers and Miscellanea.—Classed as such, though we may have to bestow some of them elsewhere, are at present one document in Exchequer K.R., Miscellanea, and eleven among the “Exchequer Accounts”. Of the latter six are “Mise” and “Imprest Rolls,” partly known by the Record Commission publication (Exch. Acc. 349, Nos. 1 B, 2 and 3; and 325, Nos. 1, 21, and 2), and referred to under “Household” below. Of the remaining five, two (Exch. Acc. 505, Nos. 2 and 3) have to be eliminated at once as they belong really to the following reign;2 on the other hand one (Exch. Acc. 349, No. 1A) at present classed as belonging to the previous reign must be assigned to our period. We have therefore to consider under this heading five documents,1 of which one (Exch. Acc. 152, No. 1) has been printed by a foreign student.2

Tallies.—One possibly of this reign has survived.3

Receipt Rolls.—We have one doubtful fragment (Receipt Roll, 2) and one Jewish Roll (Receipt Roll, 1564). For purposes of illustration we may note four earlier fragments: two of Henry II,4 one of Richard I,5 and one (a Jew Roll) of the same reign.6

Issue Rolls.—None survive.

Original Writs of Liberate.—One such has been found in “Ancient Correspondence,” vol. 47, No. 2.

Household or Camera.—Here are to be classed the three “Mise” Rolls and possibly the three “Prestita” already mentioned. Two of them7 were formerly included among the Chancery Rolls and were printed by Hardy:8 they came from the Tower, which was a repository both of Chancery and Exchequer Records. The remaining four probably came to the Record Office all from the Carlton Ride repository of the Ancient Miscellanea of the Exchequer K.R. Of these four the two Mise are duplicates, the best of which9 Cole has printed. Cole has also printed10 one of the “Prestita” but the other has not yet been published. The “Mise” are of the twelfth and fourteenth years of John, the “Prestita” of the seventh, twelfth, and fourteenth to seventeenth years, the last1 (fourteenth to seventeenth) being unprinted and consisting really of separate rolls for several years.

It will be noticed that we have made so far no reference Some gaps and the Chancery Records. to “Originalia” or to “Norman Records”. Both require some reference to the Chancery as well as the Exchequer; and may therefore conveniently be treated together here.

Originalia.—Actually at the Exchequer there is no trace of these. The classes of Chancery Records from which the Originalia, when they came into existence, were drawn give us in the time of John a varying amount of Exchequer information, and to these we must go direct. We may note them in the Chancery.

Liberate Rolls.—There are three of these belonging to the second, third, and fourth years of John; all were printed by the Record Commission2 with an introduction by Sir Thomas Hardy; but we shall have a small addition to make to them later.

Close Rolls.—These again were all printed by the Commission with an elaborate introduction, also by Hardy. Including three duplicates they number fifteen rolls covering the sixth to the ninth and the fourteenth to the eighteenth years of the reign. We may add that two fragmentary membranes have been recently discovered and added to the rolls of the sixteenth and seventeenth years;3 these fragments fill a number of gaps in the printed version.

Fine or Oblata Rolls.—Including three duplicates there are eleven of these covering the first, second, third, sixth, seventh, ninth, fifteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth years of John’s reign. These, once more, were all printed by the Commission under Hardy’s editor-ship. We shall have later to say a few words with regard to the nature of these Chancery Rolls. For the moment we may leave them, adding, in passing, a mention only of the Patent and Charter Rolls, less directly connected with Exchequer procedure; together with a note that we shall have ourselves a small fragment to add to the Fine Roll class.

Norman Records. Turning now to Norman Records we have to examine two divisions, Exchequer and Chancery. The first of these, that of the Norman Pipe Rolls, includes duplicates, presumably Chancellor’s Rolls though they are not known under that name; it consists now of a collection (formed in 1862) of eighteen rolls, fourteen being of the reign of John and four of an earlier date. These rolls were edited in 1840 and 1844 for the Society of Antiquaries by Stapleton. Unfortunately the later arrangement does not correspond with that of Stapleton and it is a little difficult to decide which rolls he used. It is clear that he collated the duplicates to some extent; but that he had not access to all of them is plain from the fact that he printed1 the very fragmentary Roll No. 2 (membrane 16), of which No. 6 is a practically uninjured duplicate. It may be convenient to add here as a footnote a key to the Rolls used by Stapleton.2 We have to add the fragment discovered and printed by Delisle,1 though this does not belong to our period. We shall have later to make a small addition ourselves.

We come finally to the Norman Rolls of the English Chancery. These form part of a single series applying in turn to the reigns of John and Henry V. Hardy printed six rolls for the first of these reigns (three of the second year and one each of the third, fourth, and fifth) and one for the second, with an Introduction which is for once, definitely inadequate. He does not consider the question whether a single title is really applicable to the rolls of the two reigns nor, though he gives some faint indication of it, the fact that the rolls of our period are themselves by no means a homogeneous series. His work was continued (for the reign of Henry V) in a calendar in the Appendix to the Deputy Keeper’s Forty-second Report without any recognition of the fact that in the meantime an entirely new Norman Roll of John had been added to the series No. 1 (the rolls are now numbered in an order different from that in which Hardy printed them); and that a new membrane had been added to one of the Rolls (No. 6)2 already published. The extra roll need not, in point of fact, trouble us here as it has in reality nothing to do with Normandy; being a portion of an English Liberate Roll.

In concluding our summary we must add, for completeness a reference to the Plea Rolls of this reign; there are fifty-five Plea Rolls of the King’s Court and twelve belonging to the class of “Visitational” jurisdictions; 1 also to the early files of Feet of Fines containing fines of our period, some of which have not been printed.

Unpublished Records. We have thus, unpublished and unconsidered, besides the Pipe Rolls and all save one of the Chancellor’s Rolls, two Memoranda Rolls, five documents in the class of Exchequer Accounts,2 two in that of Receipt Rolls, one and a fragment in that of the Norman Rolls, one at least in that of Norman Pipe Rolls, and two fragments in that of Close Rolls; together with a tally and an original writ of Liberate. The three last named need not detain us. We have in addition a body of unpublished Plea Rolls and Feet of Fines, the indirect evidence from which might be considerable; but this again is beyond our scope. And we have suggested that the significance of the Chancery Rolls published by the Record Commission has by no means been exhausted as yet. In opening some investigation of these possible sources of information we may conveniently recapitulate one or two points with regard to Exchequer procedure which it is very desirable to remember.

A. Touching the Relation of the Upper and Lower Exchequer.—(1) Receipts of the King’s Revenue do not necessarily all appear on the Pipe Roll. I have noticed elsewhere the cases of Jewish Receipts3 and the collection of William Cade’s debts.4 Moreover the whole of the revenue of the Crown does not necessarily go through the Lower Exchequer; we have already mentioned the possibilities of the “Camera”.

(2) In the case of Issues the Pipe Roll is even more incomplete. Essentially it covers only the cases where an official has money paid to him for which he is held to account; these being generally cases in which the money is not paid out of the Treasury at all but subtracted in advance by the accountant, to meet current expenses, from that which he will be expected to pay in.

It is thus seen that the Pipe Roll is not a guide to receipts and expenditure, and that the only relation between the Upper and Lower Exchequers is that the latter is required to give evidence, not of all its receipts, but of such only as establish or disprove the statements made by an accountant at his Audit.

B. As to Norman and English Administration.—Historians have been agreed up to the present that the Norman “Scaccarium” is merely a reproduction in Normandy of the English one, mutatis mutandis, made for convenience; similarly a Norman “Thesaurus” reproduces the English “Thesaurus”. Since there is no audit of the King’s Receipts and Issues as a whole, and Exchequer procedure acts only as a check upon the local accountant, there is no inconvenience in this. Previous writers, however, have taken the existence of a similarity in points of surface procedure between the two rather for granted; in spite of the warning of the “Dialogus”. Delisle for instance, in a work1 which still stands so far as regards its survey of the divisions and resources of Normandy as a revenue producing country, treats the actual machinery of the “Scaccarium” in somewhat cursory style, boldly applying the “Dialogus” description of the English institution to its Norman parallel and even importing into the latter, without evidence, a system of “Originalia”2 which did not adorn the English, Exchequer, so far as we know, till a later date. Beyond an inaccurate description of one of Stapleton’s Rolls as a Receipt Roll he has not found it necessary to make any serious attempt, nor have his successors Monsieur Valin and Prof. Powicke, to establish the existence and scope of other records or record processes in Normandy;1 nor, though it is agreed that one chief executive office, one chancery, controlled both countries, have they looked very far for any possible special treatment by the Chancery of Norman affairs.

Some Notes on these Records. The Pipe Rolls. We turn, now, to the “Pipe Rolls” of the reign of John. The bulk of these, as has been said, is so enormous that it would be unwise even to attempt to sketch out all the problems which the student of them will be called upon to discuss when they, with those of Richard I, are in print. It must suffice to venture one or two theories as to the lines upon which growth was going on in the class during our period; growth, that is, away from originally simple essentials into the utter confusion which undoubtedly reigned at the end of the thirteenth century and the highly complicated character which, we know, marked these Records from the latter part of Edward II’s reign onwards. It would be particularly unwise since, apart from the bare outlines just suggested, no one has yet made such research as would enable us to get a clear and detailed idea of the state of things which was in existence in these later periods.

Under these reservations we may venture here to put forward the fairly obvious suggestion that later developments of the originally simple Pipe Roll hinge entirely on the attempt to apply this essentially simple machinery either to business for which it was not designed or to business of a bulk so vastly increased that it broke down under the sheer weight. I have suggested1 that as early as Henry II the machinery used for getting in, or for assuring, what was then the greater part of the King’s income was proving quite inadequate to provide him with cash; that so early as 1166 the King was habitually anticipating many and large sums by means of assignments. This alone introduced cross references into the accounting to an extent almost unbearable; and it is to be remembered that the use of these convenient assignments was continually growing. Again the sources of income which figure in our original picture of the “Scaccarium” all increased in bulk; the cases, for instance, which came into the King’s Court, and consequently the fines and amercements, alone sufficed by their enlargement to upset machinery based upon an idea that all the accountants could be assembled at the Annual Exchequer in a limited period, their accounts audited and the roll describing the process written up while that process was going on. Besides, the actual numbers of sources of income increased; and though (as in the case of the Jewish talliages) many of them do not come under the Pipe Roll audit, yet we may argue, I think, that Exchequer opinion would be always working up towards a state of affairs when these new sources should be under the same restrictions as the old—throughout its long history the Exchequer was always trying to subordinate the new (whether in material or forms) to the old; not only this, but it would be—we know it was—working up always towards the inclusion of the spending departments in the Audit; that is to the state we find when Foreign Rolls and the like modifications appear. Finally in considering the developments we may expect to find at the Exchequer, or indeed in any administrative department, we have always to reckon with the fact that John’s reign followed that of Richard, a period which introduced new elements of confusion while it is scarcely likely to have found time for much rearrangement or reform. The early Pipe Rolls, at least, of John’s reign contain references to numerous arrears of the time of his brother; an entertaining instance may be found in the cases of certain people who still owed substantial fines for siding with Count John.1

Taking all these considerations into account we may confidently anticipate that the reign of John will find the Exchequer system as it was badly hit at certain definite points. There is a difficulty of getting business through in anything like reasonable Audit. time, a tendency of the Audit to spread over a longer and longer period—convention makes its proceedings begin at Michaelmas, but from Michaelmas they extend for an ever-lengthening time. The resulting confusion—since the sheriff of one county accounts in October while he of another is perhaps not dealt with till March—between the accounts of a given year and those of the preceding and succeeding ones is potentially very great; there is confusion also between different kinds of Exchequer records at any given date; for example the Yorkshire receipts of March of a given year might belong to the York-shire audit of the previous or following year. A Pipe Roll which shall be written up at the actual time of audit becomes, in fact, an impossibility. Further there is a legacy of arrears, and these we may say are increasing. Finally there is a confusion between transactions which go on the Pipe Roll and those which do not, a confusion that is between Treasury, or “Recepta,” matters on the one hand and “Camera” matters on the other, which may be productive of extreme inconvenience in public administration.

From these facts again we may deduce the probability of an attempt to solve Exchequer problems on certain definite lines. First, we may expect to find preliminary and supplementary processes of all kinds going on at the Upper Exchequer before and after Audit, all the year round in fact. Secondly, we may deduce a Pipe Roll made up beforehand and consequently having to be either corrected at Audit time or else left blank or incorrect in parts; and again we may expect the beginning possibly of some organized forms of new account—some attempt (it is the obvious remedy for congestion at the final audit) at a preliminary “Compotus” in certain chosen cases; and certainly of the habitual accumulation of a great many vouchers and Memoranda. This last in particular—the extension of the habit of keeping Memoranda—is a fairly certain deduction; the mere lapse of time which may occur between the preliminary interview of the Exchequer officials with an accountant and his final examination, the mere amount of confusion that may be caused in his accounts by the fact that he has paid in money in two or three different ways and places—these and other considerations such as we have adumbrated above must, if anything at all is to be accomplished at the Exchequer, connote some attempt at organized Memoranda of extra-audit transactions. It is to this class of Records therefore that we must turn for indications of the new developments in audit procedure which were produced by the time and circumstances of the reign of John.

The Rolls of the Norman Exchequer. Before we do this, however, we may perhaps glance at the Norman Exchequer. We know that the two Exchequers are at least closely connected; and we know1 that Richard of Ilchester was transferred to the Norman Exchequer in 1176, presumably in order to effect changes of some kind whether these were in the direction of differentiation from or approximation to the English model.

In the first place, are these Norman Pipe Rolls so close to the English ones in small surface matters as is assumed by most people and to some extent by Stapleton? The eighteen rolls fall into two groups. The smaller of these, consists of only three rolls. One of these occupies two pages2 in Stapleton and is fragmentary; we may say at once that most of the missing part is to be found in the unprinted Exchequer Account already referred to3 which has hitherto been described as a Mise Roll and ascribed to the reign of Richard I; the two fragments form together an almost complete account of the receipts and expenditure of Warin de Glapion, Seneschal of Normandy, in 1200/1. The two other rolls are duplicates and are similar accounts of Robert de Veteri Ponte, then bailiff of the Roumois, in 1203. The larger of the two groups is that of the Norman Pipe Rolls proper; but they differ from the English ones in several important respects. All are of much the same breadth4 (11 inches) but this is not the same as that of their English contemporaries which are about 15 inches. In length again they vary between 3 and 8 feet, the largest rolls consisting of a number of membranes sewn head to tail (the English rolls practically never exceed two). Another point of difference is found in the way in which they are written.5 Some6 are indexed at the tail of the membrane, as all the English ones are, and they have place headings and, after the form, subject headings which correspond, “mutatis mutandis,” with those on the English ones. But they impress one rather as having a common tradition with their English contemporaries than as being written by scribes trained in the same school. It is possible that this surface impression is incorrect, but in any case it is not improbable that a palaeographical examination of the two sets of rolls might establish points of importance with regard to the relations of their producers.

But there is one more noticeable difference to be mentioned. We have already alluded to the inclusion in the Pipe Roll of accounts other than those of the normal accounting officials as being one of the obvious results which must spring from the widening of the sources of revenue and as one of the great changes, crystallized in the fourteenth century, of which earlier traces might be found. The distinction of such from the ordinary accounts which appear on the Pipe Roll are, first, the fact that they may be rendered by all kinds of officials; secondly, the fact that they are more marked by division into receipt and expenditure, each of these being usually given a “Summa Totalis”; and finally, the fact that the receipts may represent sums not collected from the King’s subjects to be paid into the Exchequer and only expended upon the King’s special order, but sums received from the Exchequer expressly for the purpose of definite expenditure. Now the germ of such accounts is to be found in certain early Pipe Rolls and in certain exceptional cases. Thus the Warden of a Mint must necessarily, from the nature of his business, account in some such way as that just described. Besides this, cases will be found such as that of the Sheriff of Kent who was charged with military building on a large scale at Dover in 32 Henry II1 ; in that case the sheriff renders account, among other matters, “de recepta sua de Thesauro”.2

The Norman Pipe Rolls seem undoubtedly to carry this principle further and it is possible that we see here Richard of Ilchester adopting at the Norman Exchequer reforms which his English experience had shown him to be necessary, but which, for various reasons, were delayed in England till a later date.

This may lead us to a discussion of the small second group of three Norman Pipe Rolls.3 These rolls are narrow (8 or 9 inches) and short. They use the phrases of the Pipe Roll—” reddit compotum,” “est quietus,” and so forth: but they are also distinguished by new ones and they are distinguished particularly by a division into two main parts—Receipts and Expenses with a final balance. Not to linger over the description they are strikingly similar to the later “compotus” of the English Exchequer, the preliminary accounts compiled from vouchers in the King’s Remembrancer’s department which we noted above or to the final copy of these enrolled among the Foreign Accounts; and they show us first the Seneschal and then Robert de Veteri Ponte expending money received for the purpose from the Exchequer—even from the English “Thesaurus”. We have in fact at the Norman Exchequer an anticipation of two most important points in later English Exchequer processes—the auditing of foreign accounts, including a considerable quantity of accounts of expenditure; and the auditing of them apart from the ordinary Pipe Roll process and on a different kind of roll.

This is to say that we have found, if our suggestion is correct, an anticipation of the later attempt to meet difficulties of time and place, caused by increase in the number and size of accounts, by means of a separate audit. Let us turn now to consider the other expedients which, we have suggested, must have grown into a greatly increased use to meet the same difficulties—the Memoranda which, in an embryo form, we saw existing in the time of the “Dialogus”.

In this connection we may examine in some detail The first Memoranda Roll. the first of the two Memoranda Rolls already noted;1 though it is to be remarked that neither in this case nor in that of many other Records mentioned in this paper can anything approaching exhaustive treatment be attempted; indeed the present roll bristles with points of administrative interest which we cannot even notice here. This roll bears on its first membrane the title, “Communia Memoranda de termino Sancti Michaelis post mortem Regis Ricardi anno regni Regis Johannis primo”. It consists of sixteen membranes all of much the same breadth (about 6 inches) with six small pieces of parchment considerably narrower. Membrane 2 is entitled, “Item Communia Memoranda Mich.”: and membranes 3, 4 “dorse,” 5 “dorse,” and 6 are similarly described. Of these membrane 1 has the sub-title, “Isti sunt vice-comites qui venerunt ad Scaccarium in crastino Sancti Michaelis vel pro se miserunt anno regni Regis Johannis primo”. Membrane 5 “d” (which is continued by membrane 6) has the sub-title, “de singulis vice-comitibus qui ponunt plura debita super singulos”. The meaning of this is made clearer by the form adopted on the next membrane—” de vicecomitibus qui ponunt debita unus quisque super alterum,” to which a frivolous scribe has added what is possibly the earliest known official jest.1 The remaining membranes are all of the same kind, each containing matters grouped together under counties. Thus membrane 4 deals with Surrey and Kent, membrane 5 gives us the affairs of Nottingham and Derby, membrane 9 “d” those of Oxford, which are continued on membrane 10; and so forth. Membrane 13 is devoted to Jewish business. The small membranes may be left for the moment.

It is clear that we have here rolls similar to the later series of Memoranda Rolls; the arrangement makes this plain, giving us, as it does, “Adventus Vicecomitum” on the first membrane and so considerable an amount of the well-known later division of “Communia”. It is fairly clear also that we have not here the first of the series—it is not sufficiently experimental; and indeed there are definite references to earlier Memoranda. But to consider the “Communia” in rather more detail:—

A large number of the entries under this heading consist of “dies dati”—days assigned to Accountants for their auditing—or respites or adjournments. There are about sixty such entries and roughly speaking they follow a chronological sequence; though to make this nearly perfect we must suppose that membrane 4 “d”2 should properly follow membrane 2. Thus starting with adjournments which are mostly for October or November we work down to those for April. Interspersed with these entries we have about a dozen cases where it is definitely mentioned that so-and-so “venit hic” or “venit coram Baronibus “on a particular day; these again are chronological, extending from October to the end of March. We have thus in the “Communia” a record which is being compiled day by day during the Michaelmas term; but the entries in which never refer to any audit which was actually in hand at the moment of writing. This, however, does not end the contents of the “Communia”. Interspersed in this regular chronological sequence are a large number of entries recording that a fine has been made or is due or has been paid, that the King sent his writ “in these words,” that so-and-so is not to be summoned on such-and-such an account, that a writ has been sent to the sheriff, that an account is to be transferred from one membrane to another on the Pipe Roll, and so forth. It is to be noted that all “Communia” entries have their counties noted in the margin.

Now this last section of entries is not very different in character from those which appear on the other membranes—those arranged under counties; though these latter tend to be distinguished by the use of such phrases as “loquendum cum...” to introduce them and in a number of cases have notes obviously added to them at a later date (membrane 8 actually has space deliberately left for such notes). On the whole I think there can be little doubt that, while the “Communia” include (1) what are later separate sections in the shape of “dies dati” and various “Brevia,” (2) matters noted for reference when some account, not yet audited, shall come up or in future terms; the county membranes give us matters left unsettled during the auditing of each sheriff’s accounts. This close connection of the county membranes with the actual making of the Pipe Roll is supported by the fact that their entries are found to correspond with cases on the Pipe Roll where the essential words of the entry (the “debet” or “reddit compotum”) are left blank.1

If this explanation be correct we have established the use of the Memoranda in John’s time not only for the noting of calendar arrangements made with accounts but also (1) for recording all kinds of current business which was now too voluminous to be dealt with without some kind of Minutes; (2) the easing of the calls of auditing upon a limited amount of time by the regular reservation of matters which were doubtful or perhaps controversial. This second difficulty—that of time—was met later almost entirely by the expedient of preliminary audit, of which we noticed traces above.

We have not quite exhausted the contents of our first Memoranda Roll: there remain the small membranes and the Jewish membrane. The small membranes include one which again foreshadows a well-known division of the later Memoranda Roll, giving us amercements of sheriffs who had failed to attend at Easter and appointments of days for views of accounts.2 This last is obviously important with regard to the matter of shortening the taking of accounts already referred to; but we have not sufficient details to found suggestions upon it. The remainder of the small membranes are Memoranda giving the details of larger sums for which various persons have to account; in a word they are in the nature of “estreats “or of “particulars,” of which we shall have to say a little later.

The Jewish membrane is headed, “Compotus Benedicti de Talemunt de debitis et finibus Judeorum Anglie a festo purificacionis anni noni regis Ricardi usque ad festum Sancti Hillarii anno Johannis primo”. It is to be noted that this is not the actual “Compotus” of Benedict but Memoranda upon it. It is particularly interesting from many points of view; but the whole question of the administration of moneys paid by the Jews is so complicated that it is difficult to deal with any sections of it within a reasonable space.We may note, however, that the payments for which this Jew was responsible were apparently not intended to appear, and did not appear, upon the Pipe Roll; while on the other hand he apparently did account for them.1 I have endeavoured elsewhere2 to show that later, at any rate, there was a distinction between Receipts from Jewish talliages and Receipts from other Jewish sources; the latter (not the former) being collected by the sheriffs and figuring, though obscurely,3 in their Pipe Roll accounts and in the ordinary Memoranda Rolls; whereas talliage matters did not appear on the Pipe Rolls and, if they required Memoranda, must have had special ones devoted to them. Since the matters here noted are of a very general character and are yet stated to be the subject of a “Compotus,” we may conjecture that we have here traces of an early experimental stage in the Exchequer treatment of Jewish administration.

To sum up, we have in this Memoranda Roll not only interesting foreshadowings of the Memoranda Rolls we know later and indications of earlier ones in the same series now lost; we have also certain definite signs of the result upon Exchequer administration of the increased size and number of accounts. First, the Memoranda of the “Dialogus” developed into “Communia” in which were set out in an orderly fashion the various “notanda” of a busy department; these “Communia,” throwing off, as it were, smaller specialized divisions for certain regularly recurrent items, produced the Memoranda Roll as we know that record; and in the example we have been examining may be found in embryo all the varieties of matter which the subsequent rolls contain.1 Secondly, our roll shows us attempts being made to meet the second great difficulty of the period—not only the increased business but the consequent increased demand upon available time. In our roll it is met by the reservation of special points; later it was met by a system of preliminary audits, the adoption of which eliminates the necessity for county membranes which consequently disappear from the later Memoranda Rolls. It is even possible that we have in our roll an indication of the trying of this method of separate audit also in the case of the Jewish matters.2 Finally, the Memoranda Roll of John’s first year gives interesting testimony to the fact that all Exchequer development turned on the necessities of the Pipe Roll and its scribes. Elsewhere3 I have suggested that even the early Receipt Rolls, though the “Dialogus” tells us they were made in the lower Exchequer’ presumably for the convenience of that office, were conditioned in all the particulars of their form and making by the necessities of the Pipe Roll scribe. The same might be said of the county membranes of the Memoranda which we have been discussing—their arrangement, writing, and form all confirm the inference which may be made from their contents. And in the small membranes which we have noticed what have we but those rolls or notes of particulars the existence of which elsewhere is not infrequently noted1 by the Pipe Roll scribe when he has not time or patience to insert their details in his roll? These are the germs of the collection of vouchers by the King’s Remembrancer which has given us our modern class of “Exchequer Accounts, etc.”

We have dealt at so much length with this important Other Memoranda and Vouchers. Record that there is little space left to discuss others like or connected with it. We may take these in conjunction with the vouchers. It will be remembered that we have to deal with three2 documents from the class of “Exchequer Accounts” and one from the “K.R. Miscellanea”. To these we may add the companion roll to that just described—L.T.R. Miscellaneous Rolls, 1/4: but we may eliminate the “Miscellanea” document, reserving it for treatment with the Chancery Fine Rolls. Taking first the last of these, a roll of about a dozen membranes with a few smaller membranes or slips, we find we have to notice most of the features which were prominent in the previous example. We have the title “Memoranda” with two interesting variants which suggest a still fluid state—“Memorialia” and “de Memoriis” on membrane 8: and we have apparently “Communia” on membrane 1. We have “Adventus Vicecomitum” (under that title) on membrane 2. We have the same distinction between “Communia” entries and membranes assigned to particular counties. We have letters from the King to the barons (m. 3). And we have again a special section devoted to the Jews (m. 13), entitled “Compotus,” though it is really only a number of Memoranda upon an Account. In this connection we have to note an innovation, for a similar heading on membrane 12 relating to Hugh de Nevill introduces us to an actual rough “Compotus,”1 which seems to take us a step towards the use of preliminary audit. This roll covers the Easter and Michaelmas terms of the tenth year of John, with some reference to the preceding year. The whole appears to be an incomplete set of membranes. Two final points to be mentioned are concerned with the use of the word “Extracta” as a title on a membrane (m. 14) containing lists of debts, and with the nature of the small membranes which are here, as before, to be classed as either “Estreats” or “Particulars”.

In connection with this last point it is to be noted that even in later periods it is very frequently impossible to decide whether an isolated list of entries in the form “De Johanne de London v.s.” is an “Estreat” from other Records showing amounts which are due, or a “Particular” giving the details of sums actually handled elsewhere (on the Pipe Roll) but handled there only in gross. The presence, of course, of the word “Extracta” makes it certain that we are dealing with a list of debts which are to be exacted; but other of these lists, notably the small membranes on the Memoranda, are more probably Particulars.

This may serve to introduce us to a group of rough rolls giving, under a county arrangement, lists of debts which we may conjecture to have been left over at the end of a term of audit and listed for the purpose of a summons for the next “Scaccarium”; indeed we have, in one or two places, items cancelled with the note “ponitur in submonicione” or “in Rotulo est”. This group includes, besides membrane 14 of the roll just dealt with, three documents of the next reign,1 which we may perhaps mention in passing because they correspond so exactly with seven membranes and a fragment out of the twenty-two which make up Exchequer Accounts, 505, No. 4, a roll in very bad condition which is ascribed to our period and may belong to it; though the evidence for the date is not on any of these eight membranes. It is to be noticed that certain membranes are indexed with a county reference at the foot and have added the word “Em’,” presumably for “Emendatur” or some other part of that verb; meaning, apparently, that the list has been checked.

We are left with the bulk of the roll last mentioned Norman Memoranda. (Exch. Acc. 505/4) and with Exchequer Accounts, 152, No. 1,2 still to be described. Both are of considerable importance for they are Memoranda of the Norman Exchequer.

The first, a collection of thirteen membranes and a fragment, was joined by accident to the English membranes already noticed (as we may conjecture) during a search for information about forests conducted, as appears by an endorsement, a century or so later. However that may be, they are worthy of more study than we have space to give them here. It must suffice to note summarily a few points. Thus they belong apparently to the year 1201 or 1202. Some of them are similar (“mutatis mutandis”) to the English rolls of debts just mentioned, and have references to the (Norman) Pipe Roll and Audit summonses; we may note in connection with some of these the use of the words “Extracta” and “Extracta Memorandorum”; the last supporting the suggestion made above (in connection with the use of “Extracta” in the English Memoranda) that these lists were made up at the close of a session of the Exchequer from the Memoranda of the term. On another membrane we have Memoranda precisely similar to those in the English “Communia” of terms given for rendering account; and notes beginning “Sciendum” or “...debet respondere”; all annotated in the margin with the names of the districts to which they refer. But perhaps most remarkable are two membranes dealing with Imprests, Receipts in money and kind by Warin de Glapion and others, and expenditure at Rouen and other places over a period named;1 and mentioning the receipt (at the Norman Exchequer) of a “Rotulus de Camera Regis”.The significance of all this information is obscure, but it clearly indicates proceedings both complicated and varied, showing at the same time a close connection with the English Court and distinct individuality at the Norman Exchequer.

The other Norman document of a Memoranda character is a single membrane having no date (Monsieur Legras puts it early in the reign of John). In several places it is entitled, “Extractus Memorandorum”; also it has a note “emend’,” and another “ponitur in rotulo”; all points connecting this with the documents we have been noticing. It has, however, two characteristics of its own. One is a vertical line drawn through the part to which the note “ponitur” appears to relate—a familiar device in later Exchequer procedure. The other is the fact that we have here apparently not so much Memoranda for the use of the Court as instructions to an official who was to collect the debts: “de te ipso” is a frequent entry, and it appears that this official, whoever he was, was personally responsible for a large number of accounts.

With this we must leave the question of Memoranda Another Voucher. and Vouchers of the two Exchequers, noting only in passing and indenture1 which may be presumed to have been a voucher to some kind of account. This last very interesting document, which I believe has not been printed, gives particulars of the contents and disposal of prizes brought in to Portsmouth by John’s galleys from 25 April to 8 September in his thirteenth year.

This completes, so far as present space and knowledge The Lower Exchequer Receipts. allow it, our survey of the Upper Exchequer. We turn to the Lower Exchequer, which may be quickly dealt with. Of original Receipts, as we have noticed, there is possibly one.2 The person whose debt is mentioned on this tally, Jordan “nepos Geruasii,” appears in Records from the end of the reign of Henry II to that of John: possibly the writing on the tally makes the later date more probable.

Of Receipt Rolls we have practically nothing. The very interesting roll of the reign of Henry II,3 with a similar one1 of the reign of Richard I which has lately come to light, suggests that the Receipt Roll was in origin closely connected with the processes of the Upper Exchequer; the handwriting, though smaller, is similar, so is the division into counties. The reign of John furnishes us with an important roll showing the development out of this state (as the present writer interprets it) into that which we find in the early years of Henry III.2 The “John Roll,”3 which is devoted to Receipts from Jews, was prepared in and for the Exchequer of Receipt. In this roll we find the parchment enlarged and the writing made smaller than in the previous examples, so that there is space for two or three columns abreast; though the Pipe Roll habit of noting the contents at the foot of the membrane still persists. It is this type of roll, with its fuller contents, its “summe” added at intervals (a matter which would not concern the Pipe Roll scribe), and its make-up (in many cases) with membranes of Issues, which seems first to show us the idea of a Receipt Roll applied to the convenience of its makers rather than that of the Pipe Roll scribes.4

Before leaving this subject we must mention a small roll5 which has always been classed, in modern times at least, with the Receipt Rolls, though in character it resembles rather the “Particulars” mentioned above and though it came to the Record Office from the Tower of London. It will be convenient, however, to reserve it for illustration of a later point.

Issues. Turning to Issues we have again to note the preservation of only one original, a writ of “liberate” now among the “Ancient Correspondence”.1 It is interesting because there are only two earlier ones known, that printed by Dr. Round2 and that given by Madox. Like Dr. Round’s specimen it is sent by the Chancellor, presumably in the King’s absence. Of Enrolments of writs we have no example; the earliest is attached to the earliest complete general Receipt Roll belonging to the fourth year of Henry III;3 the earliest example of the later form of roll (which gives only a summary of the writ) belongs to the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI.

Leaving for the time the question of the Records Chancery Rolls, Norman and English. of financial departments other than the Exchequer we pass to the Records which, though belonging to the Chancery, affect either directly or indirectly the Exchequer processes.

The first question that faces us is that of the connection between the collections of the two countries together with the possibility already referred to that the Norman set are not homogeneous and perhaps not all Chancery Records. As to the nature and number of the Norman Rolls, as that name was Norman Rolls. understood in the past, we have little to guide us. We have notice4 of the bringing of rolls from Normandy but this does not help us: nor can the conclusions which Hardy5 based upon an indenture of the time of Richard II be relied upon in this particular. In point of fact one of the surviving rolls6 is definitely of Norman Exchequer origin; it begins, “Hic est rotulus cartarum et cyrographorum Normannorum factus tempore Guarini de Glapion’ Senescalli Normannie...assistentibus ad Scaccarium Sansone Abbate Cadomi....” This is a roll of fines made at the Norman Exchequer and of private deeds, including some charters from Henry II and Richard and a number from John, enrolled (we may presume) for safety among the records of the King’s Court, a function of the Norman Exchequer of which we have little notice elsewhere.1 On the other hand Norman Roll No. 1, which has been added to the series since Hardy’s time, is merely the first part (for the month of April) of the first English Liberate Roll; while No. 7, which was printed by Hardy,2 is a roll of the values of the lands of Normans in England after John had lost the Duchy.

Of the remaining four rolls No. 2 (2 John), entitled, “de oblatis receptis,” corresponds closely with the English Fine Rolls but relates to Norman affairs; the “et mandatum est,” when it appears, is addressed to Norman officials and there are interesting references to summonses to the Norman Exchequer.3 Roll 4, belonging to the same year, is called “Rotulus de Contrabreuibus”; the meaning of this is explained below; for the moment we need only observe that the writs are generally addressed to Norman Officials or else to persons abroad, while on the other hand the dates of the last membrane of the roll suggest that it was made in England. No. 5 (4 John) is a “Rotulus terrarum liberatarum et contrabreuium”; the dating of the writs enrolled here (save at the beginning) is abroad and itself was presumably made abroad, the references, too, are clearly to Norman administration—we have a special note1 of a matter “quod debet scribi in rotulo Anglie”. No. 6.(5 John) is a similar roll to No. 5; it is to be noticed that a fragmentary fifth membrane, added in 1838, has never been printed. The addresses of writs on this roll are generally Norman and the dates all Norman save four at the end, corresponding to John’s return from Normandy to England in this year. It seems clear that these two English-dated writs are only included on the roll by mistake; a mistake in the other direction has a special note2 —“in rotulo Anglie totum breue”.

Now from a later experience of the Gascon Rolls3 and other special Chancery enrolments we may remark that a special roll of this kind may either be (1) a roll of letters dated abroad,4 or (2) a roll of letters referring to foreign matters; whether these appear in other (ordinary) enrolments or not. What is the principle on which the Norman Rolls were made?

There is no serious doubt that at this date the Chancery still, as a rule, followed the King. There is a “prima facie” case therefore for making the Norman Roll a roll written in Normandy. I think this conclusion is made almost certain by the ending, already noticed, of Norman Roll 4. On the other hand, the personal touch of the King being still strong in affairs, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Norman affairs would rather monopolize the attention of his Chancery when he was in Normandy and English ones when he was in England; provided, of course, that he was in any given year dividing his time pretty fairly between the two countries. This probably resulted sometimes, by confusion, in a belief that Norman entries should go on the Norman Roll—resulted, that is, in the interpretation of this Roll’s function upon a subject basis; so that we get contemporaneous rolls of English and Norman “Liberate”; find upon an English Liberate Roll Norman entries cancelled “quia in Rotulo Normannie”1 ; and have, as has been seen, one Norman Roll actually compiled in England. The confusion would go so far that the Norman-made rolls, composed, as we shall see, entirely of entries having a financial interest,2 would be preserved in Normandy in the interests of the Norman Exchequer, although, unlike the Exchequer Rolls, they did not owe their existence to a separate body of scribes. This would explain the presence in the modern series of the Norman Exchequer Roll noticed above.

Turning to the question of the contents of these rolls we may say at once that they do not differ generically from the English ones; so that the two sets may be treated together. Taking, then, the Norman and English Chancery Rolls which are of direct Exchequer interest we may divide them into two classes, called for convenience Liberate Rolls and Fine Rolls. The first of these classes contains entries of writs of “Liberate” for payments at the Exchequer, as also some writs of pardon, of “Computate” and of “Allocate” addressed to that department. The Fine Rolls, alternatively called “Oblata” in early times, contain entries of the sums paid to the King—so-and-so “dat domino Regi” so much to obtain various privileges, licences and exemptions (the ways in which the scope of this roll was developed and modified later need not here detain us). Our Exchequer interest in the two classes resolves itself into two questions:—

• 1. How far do these Rolls relate to the business of the Exchequer and how far to that of the “Camera”?
• 2. How was the information in them imparted to Exchequer officials?

Let us take the Fine Rolls first. These Rolls are Fine Rolls. certainly compiled in the Chancery, not the Exchequer; this is made clear by plenty of notes such as “hinc mittendum in Scaccarium”.1 It is equally clear that certain entries, at least, have a definite “Scaccarium” interest and we have references to the Pipe Roll.2 It is clear again that the documents used by the Exchequer were not our rolls but copies; for we get3 such a note as this—“finis iste non debet mitti ad Scaccarium hic quia mittitur superius”. Moreover, it appears that in spite of the “dat domino” and the title of the earlier rolls—“Rotulus Oblatorum” or “Finium Receptorum”—the money was not always, at any rate, paid on the spot; this appears by the following among a number of entries:4 “Cives London’ dant domino Regi tria Millia marcarum pro habenda confirmacione...et carta liberabitur Galfrido filio Petri per sic quod si illa...volunt dare suam cartam habebunt si non autem cartam non habebunt”.

On the other hand, the interest of Fine Roll entries is not always for the Exchequer; for we have such notes as “non mittitur quia foresta”.1 And if the “dat” or the “Receptorum” ever have a literal meaning it is difficult to see how the Exchequer could need or profit by information concerning the entries on these rolls; unless we are to make the difficult assumption that the Chancery staff were at this date subjected to audit. We may perhaps make tentatively the suggestion that entries upon the Fine Rolls fall into two rough classes of cash payments and promises, only the latter engaging the attention of the Exchequer. This opens up possibilities too wide for discussion here, though we may perhaps say a word on the subject later in connection with the “Camera”. Like the other printed volumes of John Records the Fine Rolls offer scope for a careful reading and analysis. In conclusion, we have to add to the known Fine Rolls what is, though rough and written on an unusually narrow membrane, undoubtedly the fragment of a Fine Roll of the twelfth year of John (1210); it came originally from the Treasury of the Receipt, but it is not unknown for Chancery Records to be found in that Repository; it is now among the Miscellanea of the Exchequer, K.R. (I, No. 5).

Liberate Rolls and Close Rolls. Turning now to the second of the classes of Chancery Rolls to which we alluded above—the Liberate—we have to deal with three Norman Rolls proper, one Norman Roll which forms the April section of the English Liberate Roll for the second year of John, and English Liberate Rolls of the second, third, and fifth years.2 Further, it is generally admitted that this series is continued by the Close Rolls,3 which begin as has been already noticed with the sixth year. It is possible that the loss of Normandy and the elimination of the necessity for a double series of Liberate Rolls, and double reference to two Exchequers, had something to do with the innovation.

If we include the Close Rolls in the division we are now considering, the principal question facing us is what parts of the contents of the rolls would interest the Exchequer. Now the contents of the Liberate Rolls proper are writs of which the originals, by their nature, are bound either to be found in the Exchequer at the time of audit, or to be produced there by accountants; the only use for the Chancery Records of these, so far as the Exchequer is concerned, is that mentioned in the “Dialogus”—the checking of the originals by means of the “Contrabreuia” or “Rescripta”; which themselves (not in the shape of secondary copies) are brought over by the Chancellor or his clerk. It is by no means impossible that (in contradistinction to the Fine Rolls) the actual Liberate Rolls still preserved to us among John’s Chancery Rolls themselves visited the Exchequer; certain annotations upon them may even have been made in the Exchequer. If the Chancery Liberate Rolls were periodically sent over in this way it would account for the fact that no Exchequer enrolments of these writs have come down to us for the John period—it was not till the Receipt officials came to make rolls for their own convenience that such an enrolment came to be thought desirable.

To the Liberate Rolls, then, representing the “Rescriptum” The Origin of the Close Rolls. of the “Dialogus,” we see added in our period (e.g. in Norman Roll, 5) entries of “terre liberate”; that is, copies of letters which indirectly interested the Norman Exchequer. Similarly in the English Liberate Roll, 3,1 we have the title “Rotulus Terrarum et Denariorum Liberatarum in Anglia”.... Once again, then, I think we have here, as in the case of the Receipt Rolls mentioned above, the Exchequer, interest originating the keeping of rolls in another department. This other department speedily finds out the convenience of preserving such records for its own purposes, and we have added to them copies of documents (in the present case other letters close or patent) which are not, in some cases, even indirectly of Audit interest. From this the transition would probably soon be made in the case of the Chancery to an ordered treatment of the subject from a Chancery point of view; and we then get, added, the idea of Originalia or Estreats made specially for the benefit of the Exchequer, and incorporating transcripts from the Fine Rolls, with less numerous items from the Close Rolls and the Patent and Charter Rolls. It is not improbable that the duplicates surviving to us in the classes both of Fine and Close Rolls of the John period are relics of the transition stage; but here again is a subject too detailed to be dealt with in the present paper.

We have in fact in the time of John at first two distinct collections being made by the Chancery: (1) Enrolments of Charters and Letters Patent2 of which letters copies were preserved for the purposes of the Chancery; (2) Liberate, preserved primarily for Exchequer purposes.

As this second class merged into the Close Rolls the Chancery interest in the preservation of record of letters close became equal, at least, to that of the Exchequer. The stage before this is possibly responsible partly for the lack of exactitude which we some times notice in the early rolls in the assignment of a letter of one or the other kind to its proper class of enrolment.1

We have left till the last the most thorny of all the The “Camera” and the “Scaccarium”. questions connected with early financial records. Contemporary reference gives us, as administrative instruments, the “Scaccarium,” the “Thesaurus,” the “Recepta,” the “Camera,” and the “Garderoba”. What are all these and what their relations one to another? Various writers have touched upon this one and that, and have even alluded to points in their relationship. Thus Prof. McKechnie suggests that though the Audit was fixed at Westminster the Exchequer (in which he includes, presumably, the Upper Exchequer and the “Recepta”) “with much of its impedimenta of writs and tallies would accompany the King”:2 Delisle,3 speaking of Norman affairs, says “la Chambre Suivait le prince: le tresor...restait en depôt à un Chateau” (“Falaise or Caen”): Prof. Powicke4 (dealing with the Norman Exchequer) speaks of “the English Exchequer Chamber so far as that did not follow the King”.

In dealing ourselves, so far, with existing Exchequer Records we have been able to trace in John’s reign a number of the series of Exchequer records which are familiar to us at a later period and to trace, too, something of their relationship to each other and to the most important of all, the Pipe Roll; we have even ventured to suggest what were some of the matters of difficulty, the points of pressure and congestion in the old simple system of receipt, expenditure, and audit (and in the records of these processes) and consequently what signs of development and growth we may look for in our period both in the System and in the Records. We have refrained, however, so far from any attempt to fit King John’s known financial transactions (as they are reflected in innumerable instances in, for example, his Chancery Rolls) into this or that part of the machinery we were able to outline. We have been content, that is, to allude to the fact that the Pipe Roll and other machinery does deal with some financial matters while others pass it by, without attempting either to classify the first of these, or to collect concrete instances of the second.

Unfortunately we have financial Records still to deal with which touch the second of these classes—the “Mise” and “Prestita” Rolls which are undoubtedly concerned with some transactions that are outside the normal “course” of the Exchequer and the Normal Pipe, Memoranda, Receipt, and Issue Records. We are driven, therefore, in conclusion to touch upon the Record evidence for the Administration of financial matters which did not come within the influence of the Upper Exchequer. We have already suggested1 that because a matter was not subjected to Audit there is no reason that the receipt and issue side of it should not be controlled by the Lower Exchequer,2 whose business these processes were. Unfortunately the paucity of records of this department for John’s reign does not permit us to prove or disprove the suggestion that the Receipt was still giving itself little trouble over matters of which the Pipe Roll scribes did not take cognisance.

In opening this matter it is necessary to distinguish not so much between the “Camera” and the “Scaccarium,” The “Camera” and the “Curia”. as between the “Camera” and the “Curia”. It is to be remembered that the “Curia” is originally the personal entourage of the King; the “Camera” only appears when the “Curia” has been professionalized and departmentalized, supplying that personal element which the “Curia” had lost. Thus in administration when the King’s secretary has become the department or Court of Chancery, there arises a new personal secretary, a member, as the Chancellor had originally been, of the King’s household staff; similarly the Treasurer, departmentalized, is replaced from the personal point of view by the keeper of the King’s private accounts, in the contemporary phrase “keeper of his wardrobe.” We have to note first, then, that the “Camera” is not a purely financial affair; it is the successor of the “Curia” in the position of the King’s personal entourage. All kinds of duties, certainly secretarial as well as financial ones, may be undertaken by it. The unfortunate anomaly of John’s reign is that the Chancellor has not been departmentalized, whereas the Treasurer has; so that we have this member of the “Curia” still following the King and, in effect, a member of the “Camera”. Later he will be replaced there by the Keeper of the Privy Seal; but at present that instrument is no more than a signet ring which the King uses, normally, in much the same way as any private person.1

We may now attempt some distinction between the Terminology. financial terms mentioned at the beginning of this section. In the first place the “Scaccarium,” apart from its literal sense, should undoubtedly be a season, an occasion—the occasion or season of Audit. Unfortunately there seems little doubt that in early times, while this is the generally accepted sense, the word is sometimes used loosely. Madox1 has collected together several instances of what appear to be local “Scaccaria,” according to him “some subordinate Receipts or Places of Revenue”; with which he classes the “Scaccarium Redemptionis Regis Ricardi” and the “Scaccarium Aaronis” (which dealt with the debts of Aaron of Lincoln), and also a “Scaccarium Hugonis de Nevill,” to which a certain debtor was ordered to pay £700, on the understanding that Hugh de Nevill would account for the sum afterwards at the “Scaccarium Westmonasterii”. Most of the instances given might be explained as being special “occasions”; but this last of Hugh de Nevill is difficult. We may add to it a reference to John’s “Scaccarium de Merleberg’”2 at Easter, 1207. The payments which are ordered to be made there appear to some extent in the normal Pipe Roll of the following Michaelmas, so that we might suppose that on this occasion the Easter Exchequer sat, exceptionally, away from Westminster. We have to add to this, however, that a little later (in July, 1215) Hugh de Nevill’ was keeper3 of the King’s “Thesaurus” at Marlborough; that the small so-called Receipt Roll mentioned above is a short list of sums received “de ballivis Hugonis de Nevill’ unde responsum est ad Scaccarium”; and that in the Pipe Roll of the tenth year we have a “Compotus Hugonis de Nevill’ de Recepta sua”.4

It is possible that we may draw from these passages the inference that yet another expedient was tried during our period for the relief of the overworked Exchequer; an extension of the principle of “Compotus” and “particulars,” in the shape of supplementary provincial exchequers whose activities were summarized at the Audit at the “Scaccarium Westmonasterii”. Be that as it may, it is clear that we must be prepared for the use of the word “Scaccarium” in exceptional cases in a sense closely similar to that of “Thesaurus”.

About the function of the “Thesaurus” there is no ambiguity. Its business is the custody of treasure (including Records). It frequently follows the King, but sometimes he deposits1 its contents in some place which is considered safe, such as the Abbey of Reading; on the other hand, it sometimes remains apparently in places difficult of access.2 It is possible that the term was applied to more than one depôt of treasure; for we have reference to the King’s receipt at Shrewsbury of a large sum from “our Treasury of Marlborough”;3 but this may have been only a temporary localization. Did the officials of the “Recepta,” who nominally controlled the “Thesaurus,” follow the King? if not there must always have been a “Thesaurus”—though it might be empty—at West-minster. In any case there is no reason to suppose that the “Thesaurus” (or “Thesauri”) though it, or they, certainly should receive moneys paid in and audited in the old, normal way, did not also include any moneys the King might have accumulated by other methods. The “Camera” as well as the “Scaccarium” may have been, so to speak, a depositor.

There is no doubt that the King did receive, irregularly, large sums which were paid over to him wherever he might happen to be. This is to say that he received them “in camera,” in his household. Sometimes they were sums which formed part of a regular Pipe Roll account, and the barons of the Exchequer have to be notified of the receipt; sometimes they are “dona” or fines, many of which certainly did not figure in any known audit;1 sometimes they are sums derived from the “Thesaurus”. We have numerous instances of such receipts “in camera”2 or “in garderoba”.3 Do these two phrases convey the same thing? probably the explanation is that anything paid “in garderoba” was necessarily paid “in camera,” of which “garderoba” was only a part.

Prestita and Mise Rolls. This brings us to the question of the “Prestita” and “Mise” Rolls. Of the contents of these Records we have not space to say much; and indeed their relation and distinction may perhaps be sufficiently illustrated by a single quotation from a “Prestita” Roll:—4

“Eadem die ibidem Rogero Wacelin de prestito ad nauem suam omnino parandum...vi marcas...preter donum quod Rex ei dedit de aliis vi marcis que sunt in rotulo Mise.”

The interesting point to us is the question of their place in the general scheme of Administration, and (since their relation to the Pipe Rolls, if there is any, cannot be settled with certainty while those Records remain unprinted) this is largely a question of the persons who produced them.

To that question there can, I think, be only one answer. Even if relations can be established later upon some points with the “Scaccarium,” it must remain clear that these rolls were put together in and for the benefit of the King’s “Camera”. The “Prestita” are really only a development of the expenditure side of the “Garderoba,” the more normal manifestation of which are the “Mise”.1 Both are part of the King’s personal expenditure; and since the King’s personal writing officer was still, as we have seen, the Chancellor with his staff, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that Hardy was right in classing the “Mise” and “Prestita” as Chancery Records, and that they are incorrectly placed in the Exchequer because the later “Wardrobe Accounts,” which they anticipate, went there as a result of the later arrangement by which the Wardrobe was made subject to audit. In the Chancery they form part of a class, we might conjecture, which on the side of receipts includes the very curious Fine and Oblata Rolls.

In this connection we may conclude with three further citations from the Patent Rolls, which speak for themselves (1) “Sciatis quod quietum clamavimus dilectum et fidelem nostrum Philippum de Lucy de omni prestito quod ei fecimus et de omnibus receptis quas recepit dum esset in camera nostra....”2 (2) “Littere iste” (i.e. originals of enrolments on the Patent Roll) “liberate erant in Camera domini Regis Radulfo Parmentario apud Craneburn....”3 (3) “Sciatis quod...recepimus...per manum R. prioris de Rading.... Omnes rotulos nostros de Camera nostra et sigillum nostrum et rotulos nostros de Scaccario....”1 No doubt the phrase “rotulos de Camera” refers to the “Mise” and “Prestita,” but where are the Chancery Rolls, the records of letters which had issued under the “sigillum”? It is tempting to include them also under the same designation; for to the “Camera” at this date they did, in a sense, undoubtedly belong, in as much as we must hold it to have included that “Cancellaria” which still “followed the King”.

Conclusion. A study of the way in which John’s cash resources were handled, passing from England to Normandy, from the Exchequer official to the soldier, from the “Camera” to the “Recepta,” would reveal, I think, the fact that so far as he had them he disposed of them at his will freely; he may have lacked both money and men, but whatever his servants were they were not his masters. Similarly behind all the administrative confusion of the reign, the loose ends of old processes dying out, new ones beginning and tentative ones lapsing, we seem to see working a single very powerful administrative brain. Was that brain King John’s?

[1]I propose to call attention below to some exceptions. There are unpublished fragments or rolls of Close Rolls, Liberate, Fine, Norman, and Prestita Rolls.

[2]Notably in that of the “Rotuli Cartarum,” edited for the Record Commission by Sir Thomas Hardy.

[1]“The Norman Exchequer Rolls,” printed by Stapleton, and the “Chancellor’s Roll,” printed by the Record Commission.

[2]I refer throughout to the pages of the Oxford edition by Messrs. Hughes, Crump, and Johnson.

[1]The documents now known as Foreign Accounts and Enrolled Accounts.

[1]Ultimately the Clerk of the Pells and the two Chamberlains of the Receipt.

[1]They had a number of other names in their own time.

[2]Another instance might be taken from the comparative growth of Parliament and Council.

[1]E.g. by way of fines, on the one hand, or salaries, on the other.

[1]“Dialogus,” p. 81.

[2]Ibid. p. 83.

[3]See a note on the subject of Exchequer Tallies in “Archæologia,” lxii. Later these two duties belonged to distinct Officials, the “Scriptor Talliarum” and “Clericus Pellium”.

[4]“Dialogus,” p. 62.

[5]Ibid. p. 107.

[1]“Dialogus,” pp. 62, 107.

[2]One printed by Madox (“Exchequer,” chap. x. § 13, note) and one by Dr. Round (Pipe Roll Society, “Ancient Charters,” p. 96). See below, p. 285.

[3]I, xxii.

[4]Made by Madox (chap. iv.) among others.

[5]Delisle, in “Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartes,” x. 174, etc.; Poole, “The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century”; Valin, “Le Duc de Normandie et Sa Cour; Haskins, in “English Historical Review,” xxiv., and “American Historical Review,” xx.; Powicke, “The Loss of Normandy”.

[6]I, xxiii.

[7]Valin’s theory that it started later, with Richard of Ilchester, is discredited by Powicke (p. 85) and Haskins.

[8]Loc. cit.

[1]“Dialogus,” p. 122: “Cum ex regis mandato vel in camera curie vel operationibus vel quibuslibet aliis firmam Comitatus (vice-comes) expenderit....”

[2]Delisle, p. 279.

[3]“Dialogus,” pp. 82, 83.

[1]Poole, op. cit. p. 119.

[2]“Dialogus,” p. 84.

[3]Ibid. p. 70.

[1]“Dialogus,” p. 70, “Cum enim sic disposite essent sedes ab initio ut scriptor thesaurarii ad latus suum resideret...et item scriptor cancellarii ad latus scriptoris thesaurarii ut fideliter exciperet quod ille prescribebat...non superfuit locus in quo scriptor ille (Thomas Brown’s clerk) resideret...set datus est ei locus in eminenti ut prospiciat et immineat scriptori thesaurarii qui primus scribit et ab ipso quod oportet exciperet.”

[2]Ibid. p. 84.

[3]Ibid. p. 117.

[4]Ibid. p. 69.

[5]Ibid. p. 70.

[1]Madox, “History of the Exchequer” (quarto edition, ii. 263).

[2]Even so it is difficult to see exactly what part of the later Remembrancer’s duties is here foreshadowed. Something in connection with the “Adventus Vicecomitum,” but that is a matter which concerns the King’s Remembrancer equally.

[3]P. 120.

[4]“Dialogus,” p. 70.

[5]“...Licet enim (clericus Cancellarii) non prescribat conscribit tamen“...”Discipulus: Veri simile etiam videtur custodem tertii rotuli eadem scripture lege constringi.” “Magister: Non est veri simile tantum set verum.“...[ibid. p. 71].

[1]“Item scriptor Cancellarii ad latus scriptoris Thesaurarii ut fideliter exciperet quod ille prescribebat (ibid.).

[2]P.119.

[3]“Eng. Hist. Rev.” xxviii. 209. Richard of Ilchester became Seneschal of Normandy in 1176, and I have suggested below that he may have introduced there certain reforms which his English experience showed to be desirable.

[4]This phrase of the seventeenth century apologists comes very near to rendering the “antiqua consuetudo” of the “Dialogus”.

[1]Cp. Madox, loc. cit.

[2]“Dialogus,” p. 84.

[3]P. 115.

[1]This description and the division between the classes of Chancellor’s and Pipe Rolls are the accepted Record Office practice.

[2]The first is of the year 3 Henry III and the second well after 24 Henry III.

[1]Exch. Acc. 3/1, 152/1, 349/1A, 505/4; and K.R. Misc., 1/5.

[2]Henri Legras, in the “Bulletin des Antiquaires de Normandie,” xxix., 21.

[3]See “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries”. 2nd Ser. xxv., 29.

[4]Exch. L.T.R., Misc. Rolls, 1/1, 2.

[5]Receipt Rolls, 1.

[6]Exch. Acc. 249/2.

[7]Ibid. 325/21 and 349/1B.

[8]“Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Prestitis.”

[9]“Documents illustrative of English History”...p. 231.

[10]Ibid. p. 270.

[1]Exch. Acc. 325–2.

[2]“Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Prestitis.”

[3]Close Rolls, 10 and 12.

[1]i. 109.

[2]

[1]“Recueil des Actes de Henri II,” p. 334.

[2]It was added in 1838.

[1]See, for example, the “Roll of the Bedford Eyre of 1202,” printed by the Bedfordshire Hist. Records Society.

[2]One being the “Prestita” Roll.

[3]“Jewish Hist. Soc. Proc.” viii.

[4]“English Hist. Rev.” xxviii., quoted above.

[1]In “Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes,” quoted above.

[2]P. 274.

[1]Prof. Powicke has of course referred to other administrations. besides the financial one in Normandy; for instance (p. 85) that of the holding of “Common Pleas at the Norman Exchequer”; cf. Valin, p. 250 and Haskins (“American Hist. Rev.”), p. 279.

[1]“English Hist. Rev.” loc. cit.

[1]“Quia fuerunt cum comite Johanne;” cf., e.g., “Chancellor’s Roll,” 3 John (Record Commission), p. 18.

[1]Valin, p. 123.

[2]ii. 501, 502.

[3]Exch. Acc. 349/1 A.

[4]Rolls 10 and 18 (especially 10) are slightly broader.

[5]Cf. Haskins (“American Hist. Rev.”), p. 279.

[6]Rolls 2, 10, and 18.

[1]“Pipe Roll Soc.” p. 293: cf. Pipe Roll, 58, m. 5, the account of the archbishopric of Canterbury.

[2]Probably the “compotus de receptis suis” will be found to occur fairly frequently under John when the Pipe Rolls of this reign are printed.

[3]I.e. Rolls 5, 12, and 13 (Stapleton,pp. 501, 502, and 568–71).

[1]L.T.R., Misc. Rolls, 1/3.

[1]“Alter alterius honera portate et sic adimplebitis legem scaccarii.”

[2]There is nothing in the contents of the face of the membrane to preclude this.

[1]It is perhaps worth noting in this connection that membrane 9 of our roll is annotated at the foot, Pipe Roll fashion, with the names of the counties which appear on it.

[2]Also foreshadowed in the Memoranda described in the “Dialogus” (p. 115).

[1]Cf. the Oxford membrane of the Pipe Roll of this year where various Jewish debts are mentioned but have a note added: “Set Benedictus de Talemunt respondet...in compoto suo”.

[2]“Jewish Hist. Soc. Proc.,” already quoted.

[3]They may be disguised, for instance, in the phrase, “de pluribus debitis”.

[1]Including even pleadings: see membranes 2d,3.

[2]On one or two later occasions (cf. “Jewish Hist. Soc.” loc. cit. p. 37) we have Jewish accounts for no particular reason coming to normal audit and appearing among the Foreign Accounts. Generally speaking, however, the King was content with receipts from them and controlled these absolutely.

[3]“Jewish Hist. Soc. Proc.,” quoted above.

[1]Dr. Round has referred to one or two in a note in the “English Hist. Rev.”(vol.xxviii., p.525). See also p. 280 below.

[2]See above, p. 260. One of the four documents from this class there mentioned we eliminated subsequently (p. 270) as being a fragment of a Norman Exchequer Roll.

[1]Cf. other remarks relating to this rather mysterious accountant, below, p. 296.

[1]Exch. Acc. 505/2 and 3, already mentioned as having been ascribed, wrongly, to the reign of John; and L.T.R. Misc. Rolls, 1/5. The first and last of these are early in the reign of Henry III (about the third year); the second is later (after the twenty-fourth year).

[2]Monsieur Legras in printing this document has commented on a number of subjects of interest connected with it, but not to any extent upon its administrative significance.

[1]I have not been able to make this correspond with the itinerary of King John at any time in Normandy.

[1]Exch. Acc. 3/1.

[2]Described in “Proc. Soc. Antiq.,” 2nd series, xxv. 29.

[3]Printed in facsimile by the London School of Economics.

[1]Receipt Rolls, 1.

[2]Ibid. 3 and following. This point of view with regard to the early Receipt Rolls has been developed in a paper in “Jewish Hist. Soc. Proc.” viii.

[3]Ibid. 1564.

[4]See also above, pp. 278–279.

[5]Receipt Rolls, 2

[1]A.C. 47 (No. 2).

[2]Pipe Roll Society, “Ancient Charters,” p. 96.

[3]Receipt Rolls, 3.

[4]Safe conduct for Peter de Leon, “Rot. Lit. Claus.” (Record Commission), p. 3.

[5]Ibid., Introduction, p. iii.

[6]Norman Roll, 3. It may be convenient here again to equate the printed references with the modern references to the rolls. Hardy’s page 1 is Norman Roll, 3; p. 22, Norman Roll, 4; p. 37, Norman Roll, 2; pp. 45, 98, and 122, Norman Rolls, 5, 6, and 7 respectively.

[1]The enrolling of private deeds on the English Pipe Roll was not unknown: a fee was, of course, paid for the privilege. The present roll, however, may prove on investigation to have been put together rather for the benefit of the Exchequer than of the persons concerned in the deeds.

[2]“Rotuli Normannie,” p. 122.

[3]Ibid. pp. 37, 38, 40, 41.

[1]P. 77.

[2]P. 107.

[3]See the edition of these by Francisque-Michel and Bémont in the series of “Documents Inédits”.

[4]Cf. for example the Gascon Rolls of Edward II.

[1]Liberate Roll, 2, m. 5.

[2]We never get separate Norman Patent or Charter Rolls in our period, but there are plenty of entries of letters patent on the Norman Rolls when they concern financial matters.

[1]“Rot. de Fin.” (Record Commission), p. 115; cf. pp. 76, 222, 228, 239, etc.

[2]E.g. an entry (p. 277) cancelled “quia ponuntur in Rotulo”.

[3]P. 296.

[4]P. 11.

[1]P. 293.

[2]The dates of these may be compared with those of the Norman Liberate enrolments already mentioned for the years 1200 and 1203.

[3]Later the writs of Liberate were separated off from the Close Rolls and the Chancery Liberate Rolls resumed as a separate series.

[1]Liberate Rolls 1 and 2 have no titles; only later endorsements.

[2]The Patent and Charter Rolls date from the beginning of the reign.

[1]Cf. Hardy, Introduction to “Rot. Norm.,” p. xi.

[2]“Magna Carta,” 2nd edition, p. 268.

[3]P. 279.

[4]P. 85. I am not quite sure how far in another place (p. 349) Prof. Powicke distinguishes “Camera” and Exchequer.

[1]Above, pp. 264–265.

[2]In later times receipts from the Jews were so controlled though the Pipe Roll seldom touched them.

[1]“...per paruum sigillum quia magnum non erat presens...” (“Cal. Rot. Pat.” p. 66): the use is evidently not normal.

[1]“Exchequer,” chap. iv. § vii.

[2]“Cal. Rot. Pat.” p. 170.

[3]Ibid. p. 147. I am indebted to my wife for this reference.

[4]Quoted by Madox, loc. cit.

[1]“Cal. Rot. Pat.” p. 145.

[2]Thus we find in one instance instructions given to Peter de Cancell’ to go with four others and break the locks in order to obtain a sum of money for the King (ibid. p. 136): again Peter de Maulay is to take out of it 10,000 marks, keep 1000 for expenses, and send the balance to the King (ibid. p. 161). It does not appear that de Maulay was normally connected with the Administration of the Treasury.

[3]Ibid. p. 88. This is possibly identical with the “Scaccarium” which gave us trouble above.

[1]See above, p. 289, on the subject of the Oblata and Fine Rolls.

[2]“Rot. Pat.” pp. 61, 70, 166. We have also record of moneys. paid “de Camera” (ibid. p. 185).

[3]Ibid. pp. 168, 169, 170, 174, 187, 194.

[4]“Rot. de Liberate...” (“Prestita” section), p. 175.

[1]It is to be observed that both, in the matter of their dates, follow the King, so far as we can judge. Part of the unpublished “Prestita” Roll is abnormal in form, containing only lists of prests to soldiers, and has no dates: but the last membrane (the roll for 16 and 17 John) has the dates; and they conform, as do those in the printed rolls, to the King’s Itinerary.

[2]Ibid. p. 74.

[3]Ibid. p. 73: cf. a precisely similar entry, ibid. p. 91.

[1]“Rot. de Liberate...” (“Prestita” section), p. 145, already cited above.