Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 132

The first of these was the Exchequer, which represents the oldest routine of government. Its beginnings had been primitive.

“Edward the Confessor kept his treasure in his bedroom so that the thief, who aspired to rob the national treasury, had to wait until the king took an after dinner nap before he could venture into the royal chamber, and extract from the king’s treasure chest some portion of its precious contents.”¹

Within a century there was a well-organised department, and in the reign of Henry II the Exchequer, with its formal departmental seal, had become the first separate government department in Europe.² About the year 1179 it was possible to write a very substantial treatise upon Exchequer procedure.³ That procedure was primarily designed to do the King’s book-keeping and to watch his financial interests, but it was inevitable that many other matters should also arise. In the Exchequer twice a year all the great officials of the realm sat together to supervise the whole of the financial machinery. At its head sat the Justiciar, and when that office became extinct he was replaced by the Treasurer; the Chancellor also attended and brought with him some of his clerks who issued process “from the Chancery in the Exchequer”. At the close of the twelfth century the Chancellor’s office had become so important in other directions that for the future he is only represented in the Exchequer by a deputy, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. With such a great array of high officials at the solemn meeting of the Exchequer, it was natural that any great difficulty could be immediately settled, for the highest authorities in the land were sitting around the table. In this way, a good deal of important government business of a general character was apt to take place on the occasion of a great Exchequer meeting, especially at Michaelmas term, when besides all the high officials there were also in attendance all the sheriffs who were present for the examination of their accounts.

In the first of these administrative routines, therefore, we see that a variety of functions were performed whose single bond of union was the fact that they arose in the course of one procedure, that of the Exchequer.