Exchequer. Financial institution. The term is derived from the chequered cloth, similar to a chess board, which was placed over a table to assist in the counting of sums due to the crown. Its function and organization are first described in the Dialogus de Scaccario (Dialogue of the Exchequer, c.1179): the Lower Exchequer received and issued money, the Upper Exchequer was essentially a court of account where royal revenue was managed, accounts audited, and disputes dealt with. The Exchequer thus exercised a judicial as well as financial competence. The origins of the Exchequer are not entirely certain, but it seems most likely that its institutional form dates from the reign of Henry I. The first surviving pipe roll for the financial year 1129–30 shows how the sheriffs and other royal officials were summoned to account at the Exchequer twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas. By the later 12th cent., the Exchequer was no longer itinerant but permanently based at Westminster, the first of the crown's departments to acquire a separate existence, definite organization, and buildings of its own. Although there were reforms in procedures in the mid-13th cent., and other financial bodies, such as the wardrobe and chamber, were developed in response to the crown's changing needs, the Exchequer remained the linchpin and apex of the crown's financial administration throughout the Middle Ages. In the 16th and 17th cents., the Treasury developed as a separate department, so that the administrative functions of the Exchequer declined. It ceased to be a financial department in 1833 but its judicial functions continued until 1873–80. The Treasury is now a ministerial department headed by the chancellor of the Exchequer, although the prime minister is technically its 1st lord.

Anne Curry