THE EXCHEQUER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

8/3/2019 THE EXCHEQUER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

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THE EXCHEQUERI N THE

TWELFTH C E N T U R YTHE FORD LECTURES

DELIVERED I N THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORDIN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1911

by

REGINALD L. POOLE


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PREFACE

First edition

TENyears ago 1 gave a course of lectures onthe Dialogus de Scaccario, and the book interestedme so much that I determined to remodel mymaterials so a s to form a treatise on the subject.My preparations, however, went on slowly, and itwas not until I retired from College work in thesummer of 1910 that I had leisure to advance themvery much. My election as Ford's Lecturer inEnglish History, in November of th at year, gaveme the opportunity of planning in a differentform the book which I had contemplated. Theform was necessarily that of a course of lectures ;but the subject was not the Dialogue but theExchequer itself. I have printed the lectures sub-stantially as they were delivered in last Octoberand November ; but I have enlarged the introduc-tion to the first lecture into a separate chapter,and I have added a supplementary lecture, which,though prepared, there was not tirne to deliver.Hence the six lectures now appear as eightchapters.

The form of a lecture will explain and part lyexcuse the limitations and defects of t he work.In a lecture a certain amount of repetit ion is1lnavoidable : it is necessary also to avoid


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vi PREFACE PREFACE viiobscurity of s tatement; one must not introducereserves and qualifications overmuch. I haveno doubt that I have made many rash assertionsand not a few technical mistakes. But I havesought before all things to be plain and free fromambiguity in expression. I t has also resultedth at a great deal of illustrative detail has beenomitted. Part of this has indeed been suppliedby means of notes. But a large area has beendesignedly left untouched. I have considered theExchequer as a machine at work and have triedto explain how it worked. This was all tha t Icould attempt within the limitations of a shortcourse. The other side of the subject, the sourcesfrom which the payments came, I have treatedsummarily. To have entered at all usefully intosuch matters as the assessment of Danegeld or ofscutage would have required an apparatus ofdetailed calculations which could not practicallyhave been given in lecture ; and it would besideshave distracted attention from my main subject.

Confining myself in principle to the twelfthcentury, while I have briefly indicated the con-tinuity of various offices down to modern times,I have avoided saying anything of the more com-plicated system of controlling the business ofthe Exchequer which arose when the practice ofenrolling the Chancery records led t o the makingof estreats and counterwrits, or of the specializa-tion of accounts which began under Edward I.

Nor have I entered upon the wide field occupied bythe remembrancers in subsequent times, thoughI have @en reason for believing th at their officeswere already in existence. Until the memorandarolls are accessible in print it will hardly be possibleto survey with profit the work which fell to the

departments.I t will prevent misunderstanding if I mention

that in my frequent quotations from the DialogueI never profess to give a strict translation. Irender freely and usually abridge. My obligationsto the editors of the Oxford edition of tha t workare, I hope, sufficiently implied in what I havesaid of i t in my opening chapter, which alsoexplains the nature of my indebtedness to otherwriters. But I should like to thank Messrs.C. G. Crump, Charles Johnson, and C. HilaryJenkinson, of the Public Record Office, for theirextreme kindness in answering questions whichI addressed to them at various times. Had Iventured to ask any of them t o look over myproof sheets, I am sure the text would have beenfreed from many errors. Nor should I omit toexpress my gratitude to the Secretary to theDelegates of the Clarendon Press for the readinesswith which he arranged for my convenience thatmy lectures should all be in print before theywere delivered.

R. L. P.January 1912.


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CONTENTSPAGE

PREFACE . . v1, TEXTSAND COMMENTARIES. . . I

The Pipe Rolls . . IThe Dialogus de Scaccario . 3The Black Book and the Red Book of the

Exchequer . . I3Modern Work upon the Exchequer Records . I5

11. THE ANCIENT REASURY . . 21The King's Chamber . . 22The King's Revenue . . 26Modes of Payment . 30Account by Tallies . - 33The Treasury at Winchester . - 35The seat of Judicial and Financial Adminis-

tration . 36The use of the Abacus . 43Early Writers on the Subject . 46Adelard of Bath 51English Students at Laon . 53Possible Derivation of the Exchequer from

Laon . 56The Exchequer in Normandy . - 57Blank Payments of English Origin . . 60The Exchequer not derived from Sicily . 66Influence of Norman Administrators . 67


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x CONTENTS CONTENTS xiPACEIV. THE TREASURYF RECEIPT . 70

Treasure and the Treasury . 70Officials of t he Receip t . 72The Assay . 76Stip end s of the Officials . 79The Money in use . . 82Tallies . . 86

V. THE EXCHEQUEROARD 94The Constitutio Domus Regis . - 9 1The Exchequer . 99The Officers of t he E xchequ er . . 103Rolls an d Writs . . 111The Remembrancers . . 116Emoluments and Privileges of the Officers . I 2 2VI. THE SHERIFF'SACCOUNT . 127The Fa rm of th e Shire . . 128Form of Account . . I3 1Loss of R evenue throu gh Alienation of L and s . 13 3The Sheriff's Summons . . 138Order of Account . I4 9

VII. THEGREATROLLOF THE YEAR .Pipes . .The Exchequer Year .Contents of the Roll .Settled Allowances .Terrae Datae .Casual Allowances .Receipts outside the Corpus ComitatusThe Balance .

P A G E~ 1 1 1 . HE EXCHEQUERN D THE KING'SOURT . 174

Pleas held at the Exchequer . I7 4Common Pleas . I7 7Final Concords . . 181The Chancery . . 184Archbishop Hubert Walter . . 187Results of th e Separation of th e Chancery . 185


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TEXTS AND COMMENTARIESTH Ewealth of England in records for the earlier

middle ages-I speak of the time before thethirteenth century -is unapproached by any othercountry in Europe. It is not in our historians tha twe claim a pre-eminence, though it was monksfrom the British Isles who traced the models uponwhich all the compilations of Frankish Annalswere founded. But no other country possessesanything like the mass of land charters such aswe have for the Anglo-Saxon period. No othercountry has a survey such as that of our DomesdayBook. Abroad there are a few customals of par-ticular lordships, such as the invaluable polyptychof Irmino ; but for a survey on a great scale wehave to wait un til the beginning of the fourteenthcentury, when the Urbar or terrier of the Habsburglands was drawn up. In England almost the wholecountry was minutely surveyed before Williamthe Conqueror had finished his reign. The Domes-day survey, like a modern valuation return, wascompiled as a basis for taxation ; and it is in therevenue department that our earliest officialrecords appear. The great annual rolls of theExchequer are nearly complete for the reign of


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2 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES IHenry IT and the time following, and one singlespecimen is preserved from the reign of Henry I.Here again there is no parallel abroad exceptunder the same dynasty in Normandy, wherehowever the rolls now preserved do not begin until1180.

Our series of rolls, generally known by theirlater name of Pipe Rolls, were the subject ofminute study by the learned and indefatigableThomas Madox, whose History and Antiquities ofthe Exchequer, published in 1711,~ is never likelyto be superseded in these days of rapid and per-functory work. But the texts themselves remainedunpublished until, thanks to the Record Commis-sion, Joseph Hunter printed the four oldest rolls in1833 and 1844, and one of the first year of Richard Ialso in 1844. More recently a private society wasestablished for the purpose of continuing thepublication, and since 1884 (with an intervalbetween 1900 and 1904) this Pipe Roll Societyhas issued 31 volumes, all but six of which aredevoted to the particular rolls from which it takesits name. The fact that all these new materialsare now placed at our disposal is an incentiveto make the attempt to take a general survey ofthe institution from which they proceed ; but it

My references are to the ence of those who use thepages of this edition, but I edition of 1769. An italichave cited also the chapter letter following the page indi-and section for the conveni- cates a footnote.

I THE PIPE ROLLS 3should be said a t the outset that a comparison ofsuccessive rolls, however valuable for the purposeof discovering and ascertaining the succession tolands and offices, does not serve substantially tomodify the conclusions as to the working of theexchequer system which might be drawn from thestudy of a couple of rolls.

Nor must it be supposed that the pipe rollsprofess to contain anything like a complete recordof the business which was transacted at the Ex-chequer. In order to learn this we have to take-recourse to a work which is yet another instanceof the extraordinary abundance of our historicalmaterials and which is the envy of continentalstudents. The famous Dialogue concerning theExchequer was not merely written by one who washimself treasurer, but it is written with such fullnessand lucidity of statement as to leave very fewmatters, and those not of the first importance,in obscurity. The author, Richard bishop ofLondon, set out to explain the system in whichhe had been trained, and he succeeded to a degreewhich we can hardly overpraise. That I may notseem to exaggerate the merits of a work whichmust necessarily be one of my leading authorities,I will quote some sentences from Maitland, whoseJudgement, here a t any rate, will not be disparaged.

'The book stands out as a n unique book in th e historymedieval England, perhaps in the h st or y of memeval

---I Hlstory of Bngllsh Law, 1895, . I40 f.


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4 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES IEurope. A high officer of sta te, the trusted counsellorof a powerful king, undertakes to expla in to all whomit may concern the machinery of government. He willnot deal in generalities, he will condescend to minutedetails. Perhaps his book was not mean t for the generalpublic so much as for the numerous clerks who werelearning their business in the exchequer, but still thatsuch a book should bc writ ten, is one of the wonderfulthings of Henry's wonderful reign. We may safely saythat it was not published without the king's licence, andyet i t exposes to the light of day many things whichkings and ministers are apt to treat as solemn mysteriesof state . We should know far more of the history ofgovernment than will ever be known could we have aDialogue on the Exchequer from every century ; but wehave one only and it comes from the reign of Henry 11.Henry was so strong that he had nothing to conceal; hecould stand criticism ; his will and pleasure if properlyexplained to his subjects would appear as reasonableand at any ratc would not be resisted. And so histreasurer expounded the course of proceedings in theexchequer, the constitution of thi s financial board, itswrits and its rolls, the various sources of royal income,the danegeld and the murder fine, the collection of thedebts due to the king, the trea tment of his debtors, and,coming to details, he described the chessboard and thecounters, the tallies, the scales, and the melting pot.But for him, we should have known little of the administ ra-tive and fiscal law of his time or of later times-for therolls of the exchequer sadly need a commentary-but asit is, we may know much.

The authorship of the Dialogue is not nowdisputed, but it was long obscured by severalconfusions. Bishop Bale copied from the collectionsof Nicholas Brigham an extract from the book

I THE DIALOGUE ON THE EXCHEQUER 5relative to the author's lost work, the Tricolumnis,and afterwards wrote, apparently as a guess, thename of Gervase of Tilbury between the lines ofhis manuscript.1 The conjecture was repeated as afac t in his published Catalogue of British writer^,^and was long accepted. But , as Madox pointedout, Gervase the marshal of Burgundy under theEmperor Otto IV was unquestionably a layman,and the author of the Dialogue was as certainlya ~lergyrnan.~Gervase also wrote about twentyyears later than the time when the Dialogue wascomposed. Another cause of confusion was th atthe Dialogue was often read in late copies of theRed Book or the Black Book of the Exchequer,and hence passages from the Dialogue are quotedas from the Red or Black Possibly onecopy of this book belonged to Nicholas Ockhamin the time of Edward I and chanced to have his

1 Index Britanniae Scripto-rum, Oxford, 1902, p. 477.

2 Scriptorum llustrium ma-ioris Brytannie Catalogus,Base1 1557, iii. 58 p. 250.

See the Dissertatio epi-stolaris addressed to lordHalifax, prefixed to his editionof the Dialogus at the endof his History of the Ex-cheque^, pp. x, xi. Theauthor of the Dialogue ex-pressly describes himself asa clergyman, ii. 26 p. 245.

4 Selden cites i t from libroRub. Archiu. Scacc. : Titles ofHonor, ii. 5 , 2nd ed. 1631,p. 687. Prynne,inh isAurumReginae, 1668, p. 4, says thatit was ' stiled by most, The RedBook of the Exchequer'. SirMatthew Hale, in his ShortTreatise touching Sheriffs AC-compts, 1683, p. 21, refersto ' Gervasius Tilburiensis,or the blrck Book of the Ex-chequer, written in the timeof H. 2'.


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6 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES Iname written upon it ; anyhow lord chief justiceCoke refers to the Dialogue as by Ockham : it isnot necessary to suppose that he was thinking ofthe famous sch ~o lm an .~ adox a t last settled thetrue authorship, which had, as he pointedbeen in fact clearly stated by Alexander Swerford,the editor of the Red Book of the Exchequer inthe second quarter of the thirteenth c e n t ~ r y . ~Richard the Treasurer belonged to the mostcharacteristic official family of his time.6 His

1 ' Ockam who wrote inthe raigne of Henry thesecond: ' Coke upon Little-ton (First Insti tute), 1628,P. 13.2 Sir Henry Spelman inhis Glossarium archaiologicum(3rd ed., 1687)~ cites theDialogue under the name ofNiger liber fiscalis (pp. 202 a,331 a), Niger liber Scaccarii(p. 229 b) and Ockamus quisub excessu Edouardi 2 Jloruit(p. 331 b), as well as underthat of Gervase of Tilbury(p. 502 a) . Compare the Athe-naeum, no. 3933 p. 331 b,I4 March 1903.

3 Dissertatio epistolaris, pp.xi, xii. In the preface to hisFirma Burgi, 1726, 5 10,Madox mentions that Seldenlearned from Agard on theauthority of Swerford thatthe Dialogue was written ' by

Richard Bishop of London(his name being Richard deBeaumes) under Henrie I ' ;so, even when Swerford'swords were vouched in evi-dence, they were not correctlyunderstood.

4 Ricardus Londoniensisepiscopus, licet in sui libellitractatu superius multa denegotiis scaccarii digererit :Red Rook of th e Exchequer,p. 4 (where the edition hasdegererit). This is on fo. 47of the manuscript ; superiusrefers back to the Dialogue,which ends on fo. 46.See the admirable accountof his life in Professor FelixLiebermann's Einleitung inden Dialogus de Scaccario,Gottingen 1875, which hasserved as the basis of all thathas been written since on thesubject.

R IC H A RD T H E T R E A S U R E Rgreat-uncle Roger bishop of Salisbury, a Normanfrom Caen,' was chancellor and then justiciarunder Henry I. As justiciar, for long periods heheld the reins of the government of the co u n t r ~ , ~and it was under him that the Exchequer was in-stituted. His nephew, Nigel or Neal, was employedin the business of the king's Court as early as1126 or 1127,~ nd in I133 was made bishop ofElv. When Stephen became king, Roger remained-iusticiar, his son Richard was chancellor, and hisnephew treasurer. In 1139 the family suffered an-eclipse, and Roger died the same year. Neal-recovered his bishopric in 1141, but thoughactively engaged as a baron of the Exchequer, hewas never again treasurer? His son Richard,with whom we are more directly concerned, wasborn in 1130 or perhaps a little earlier, before hisfather was in priest's orders, and was brought upin the monastery of Ely. It is not known whenhe entered the king's service ; t has been thoughtthat he was keeper of the seal : but, apparently in1158, bishop Neal bought the treasurership for him

1 William of Newburgh i.6 , in Chronicles of Stephen,Henry 11, and Richard I,ed. R. Howlett, i (1884) 36.William of Malmesbury,Gesta Regum, 5 408, ed.Stubbs, 1589, ii. 483 f.See below, p. 57.Madox, p. 141, inclined

to think that he was ; butthe evidence he quotes onlycalls him baron, p. 142 b.See Liebermann, p. 24 note 4and p. 33.6 The clericus qui Praeestsmiptorio : see Liebermann,p. 33 n. 2 . On this officer seebelow, pp. IIO f.


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8 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES Ifor 400.~ Meanwhile he advanced in ecclesiasticalpreferments. By 1169 he was archdeacon of Ely,ten years later canon of St . Paul's, in 1184 deanof Lincoln. Finally in 1189 he was made bishopof London, and held the see with the treasurershipuntil his death in 1198.~

The Dialogue was written before he was dean orbishop. The first book opens with the words, ' Inthe twenty-third year of the reign of king Henry 11,while I sat a t the window of the tower which is bythe river Th a me ~ , ' ~n the east side of WestminsterHall. This gives the year ending, according to theExchequer rule, a t Michaelmas 1177. But lateron4 the author mentions a provision made bythe king a t Michaelmas 1178, so tha t either t hecomposition of the work was not finished untilafter tha t date or else the passage is a later insertion.In any case the work was completed before thespring of 1179, for it mentions the division ofEngland for judicial purposes in to six circuits, and

1 Richard of Ely, HistoriaEliensis, in H. Wharton'sAnglia sacra, i. 627, 1691.I follow Dr. Liebermann forthe date. R. W. Eyton, in hisCourt, Household, and Itine-rary of Henry 11,1878, p. 341,says ' 1159 , but gives no .reference.The secreturn of bishopRichard appears as a counter-

seal on a charter granted byhim to the monks of Becwhich is preserved amongthe muniments of the dea n,and canons of St. George'schapel, Windsor (XI. G. 7).The legend is PAVLVSERVVSCRI~TIHS.

3 i. I p. 170.

1 BISHOP RICHA RD AS AN AUTHO RITY 9before Whitsuntide ' n that year the king alteredthe toBishop Richard I believe to be a writer whoseStatements may be accepted as absolutely trust-worthy so far as his knowledge and experience ofthe working of the Exchequer carry him. Whenhe tries to explain the origin and cause of many ofits practices he quite excusably goes wrong. A gooddeal of ridicule has been poured upon him forerrors of this sort, and i t has often been left to beimplied tha t he is almost equally open to suspicionin regard to what he says of the system of his ownday. But the two things are quite independent.I doubt whether every modern chancellv of theExchequer could give you an intelligible accountof the way in which a most important official,the comptroller and auditor-general, came t operform two functions which are not necessarily,nor indeed naturally, connected. As comptroller-general of the Exchequer he or his representativekeeps the banking account of the Treasury andsigns the cheques : as auditor-general of publicaccounts he disallows any payment not authorizedby parliament. In the one capacity he descends

Eyton says on 10 April : bodies an old error, the wordP. 226. being supposed to be con-Gesta Regis Henrici 11, nected with accompt. Theed. Stubbs, 1867, i. 238 f., cf. controller is really the con-240. See Liebermann, p. 10. tyarotulator, one who keeps aThis official spelling em - counter-roll.


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10 TEXTS A N D C O M M E N T A R I E S I E D I T I O N S O F THE DIALOGUEfrom the old auditor of the Receipt of the Ex-chequer; in the other, he takes over the dutiesof the commissioners of public accounts, whorepresent several offices of audi t which can betraced back to early times. The union of the twooffices was not completed until 1867 ; but I believe. .that many persons well acquainted with publicaffairs take for granted tha t a post of such highresponsibility, whose powers excite the admirationof foreign observers, must be an ancient elementin the constitution, though its most importantfunctions were in fac t first created in 1780.' Inlike manner the author of the Dialogue relates thetraditions current in the Exchequer, some of whichare not only unsupported but are contradicted byknown facts. But his mistakes as to the past donot in the least affect the truth and accuracy ofhis description of what he saw actually in practicein his own time ; and the more closely we examinehis treatise the more reason we shall find to placeconfidence in his statements.The Dialogue was first published in 1711 byThomas Madox as an appendix to his History and

The commissioners forexamining, taking, and stat-ing the public accounts wereappointed by the statute of20 George 111 c. 54, whichwas continued and some-times amended annually until1785, when by the statute of

25George111 c. 52, they tookover the duties of the auditorsof the imprest, whose officeswere thereby abolished, andwere constituted commis-sioners for auditing the publicaccounts.

Antiquities of the Exchequer ; and his editionprofesses to be taken from two Exchequer com-pilations of the thirteenth century known as theBlack and the Red Books. But in the Dissertatioeniqtolaris to lord Halifax, which is prefixed to the"r-- Madox explains that he began by causing--- ,a transcript to be made of two more recent copiesin lord Somers's library. This transcript, with thehelp of George Holmes, the deputy-keeper of therecords in the Tower, he himself collated with theBlack and Red Books ; and the result is thatwhat we have is a conflate text based upon twolate copies but adapted, as far as could be done,to the earlier text of the Black BookJ1 while theearliest text of all, tha t of t he Red Book, was onlyused for the purpose of emendation and for supply-ing the titles of the chapters which were absentfrom the Black Book. Madox's text was reprintedin 1870, with some corrections, by bishop Stubbsin his Select Charters and other Illustrations of

1 The calendar in the BlackBook has been assigned toI239 or 1250 on the groundthat Easter Day is enteredin it on 27 March: see theCatalogue of Manuscripts andother Objects in the Museumof the Public Record Office,6t h ed., 1909, p. 19. But noargument can be drawn fromthis. It was the convectional

date on which Easter was in-serted in calendars, especiallyin Gaul : see E. A. Loew,Die altesten Kalendarien ausMonte Cassino, Munich 1908,p. 73. The text of the Dia-logus is believed to be in adifferent hand from the calen-dar, and was probably writtennot long before the middleof the thir teenth century.


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12 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES IEnglish Constitutional History, and I shall citethe treatise by the pages of this edition becauseit is in every one's hand.l But a notable advancein the critical treatment of the text was made byMessrs. A. Hughes, C. G. Crump, and C. Johnson,of the Public Record Office, who brought out anew edition of the Dialogue at Oxford in 1902.~They produced their text strictly from threemanuscripts of the thirteenth century, the twoExchequer books already mentioned and theCottonian manuscript, Cleopatra A. 16, in theBritish Museum, which they have fully ~ollated.~Though the number of important new readingswhich they have incorporated is not in fact verylarge, they have performed the very real serviceof placing before us the means of judging whatthe manuscript evidence is, and they have suppliedan apparatus of extremely valuable notes. I t ishowever to be regretted that the form in whichthe edition is printed is one that makes referenceto it difficult. The beginnings of the chaptersare not clearly marked, and the titles, which areprobably almost all ~r ig inal ,~re omitted. Still,

I use the fifth edition,1884, the pages of which agreewith those of the eighthedition, 1900.2 De necessariis Observan-tiis Scaccarii Dialogus, com-monly called Dialogus deScaccario, by Richard, son of

Nigel, Treasurer of Englandand Bishop of London.As far as book ii. 18 :the rest is a fifteenth-centurycopy from the Red Book.The editors hold a differ-ent opinion. They say, Intro-duction, p. 8, 'The body of

I THE BLACK BOOK AN D THE R E D BOOK 13for the critical study of the Dialogue this editionis indispensable.'A large amount of materials illustrative of thework of the Exchequer is furnished by an importantcompilation made by an official hand in the earlypart of the thirteenth century. This is representedby two volumes belonging to the king's remem-brancer known as the Black Book and the Red Book.The Black Book, sometimes called the Little BlackBook, must be carefully distinguished from theBlack Book of the Treasury 'of Receipt whichcontains the Dialogue. The Little Black Book,the treatise contains one refer-ence to a chapter heading,but examination will showthat if this is anything buta gloss, it is a reference toa division of chapters otherthan tha t now existing.' Thereference in i. 10 p. 202 is toa subject raised in i. 16 p. 208,though it is true that the fullexplanation of the matter inquestion is not given untilthe following chapter. Butthis is by no means the onlyreference. In i. 6 p. 188 andii. 9 p. 225 ' in titulo desummonitionibus ' refers toii. 1 pp. 210 f.; which in thenew edition, p. 109, bearsthe title E x quibus et qualiteret ad quid$unt summonitiones.In ii. 4 p. 220 ' n titulo de

officio scriptoris thesaurarii 'refers to the section Quid adScriptorem Thesaurarii in i. 5pp. 185 ff. In i. 5 pp. 181,183, and 186 ' in agendis vice-comitis ' may rouse a scruple;for the chapter De agendisVicecomitis multipliciter is ii.3, while t he references are t oii. 21 p. 241 and twice to ii. 27p. 246. But it is to be notedtha t the citations here are notof a titulus but of a subject,and De agendis Vicecomitisdescribes the subject of t hewhole of book ii. Cf. Lieber-mann, p. 7.

1 I cite it as the Oxfordedition, and its componentparts as the Introductionand the Notes to the Dia-logus.


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I4 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES Iwhich was written in the time of John, givesthe best text of the Establishment of the King'sHousehold under Henry I, and it sets out thechartae baronurn or returns of services made by thebarons in 1166 with some miscellaneous documents.There is nothing to show by whom it was compiled,but it is generally attributed to Alexander Swer-ford, who was treasurer 's clerk and became arch-deacon of Salop and a baron of the Exchequer, anddied in 1246. The only reason for identifying theauthorship of the two books appears to be that theRed Book, which incorporates the chief p art of theBlack Book with very much more, is undoubtedlythe compilation of Swerford and probably in partin his own handwriting. Swerford therefore a tleast deserves the credit of having taken up andtransmitted the Exchequer tradition of his day.He is not to be compared in intelligence or know-ledge with bishop Richard of Londpn, and hiscomments on the records which he cites are oftensimple mistakes. If he was the actual transcriberof a part of the Red Book it must be confessedthat he was a careless worker, and his propernames and numerals are not to be trusted. Stillwe are indebted to Swerford for preserving a largestore of official information which we should no t

Alexander, the treasurer's T. D. Hardy 1835, p. 108. Aclerk, of London, is mention- year earlier he appears ased in the 5th year of John: Alexander the clerk, of Win-Rotuli Normanniae, ed. chester : p. 63.

otllerwise possess. The Liber Niger Scaccarii was.dited from three modern transcripts by Thomas---Hearne in 1728; it contains a good many errors,bu t most of them of a kind that can be easilycorrected. The Red Book of the Exchequer wasprjnted also from a transcript, but collated withthe original, though not a t all following he arrange-ment of the manuscript, under the direction of the--master of the rolls in 1898. The preface is nothelpful.'

The records of the Exchequer were at firstpreserved in the Receipt ; bu t in course of timethey outgrew this depository and were placed infour Treasuries, two in the Exchequer buildingsby Westminster Hall and two within the precinctsof the abbe^.^ A catalogue of them was made inthe latter part of the sixteenth century by ArthurAgard, who was a clerk in the Exchequer andbecame deputy-chamberlain in 1603.~ But itdoes not appear that they were at all frequentlyconsulted for any but official purposes. In theclassical age of antiquarian learning-the age ofS~elman,Selden, Dodsworth, Twysdeii, Prynne,

I use the reprint of 1771. 3 See bishop William Nicol-Mr. Round supplies criti- son's English Historical Li-cism both of the text and of brary , 2nd ed., 1714, PP.the preface of this edition in 208f.his Studies on the Red Book 4 Sir F. Palgrave, Ancientthe Exchequer, printed for Kalendars of the Exchequer,private circulation [1898.] iii. 451. Agard died in 1615.


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I6 TEXTS A N D COMMENTARIES I COTTON, PRYNNE, HALE, MADOX 17and Dugdale, who all died between 1641 nd 1686-it was the documents of the Chancery to which,aft er the chronicles, recourse was chiefly made. Thereason for this was in part that the Chancery recordswere more accessible, under an experienced keeper,in the Tower of London : in part, that scholarsfound more convenient places for study in the in-comparable library which Sir Robert Cotton hadbrought together in his house near WestminsterHall, which contained an abundance of materialsfor their purpose; and some of them worked inthe Bodleian library, which gradually amasseda large number of transcripts of records. ThoughAgard bequeathed to him most of his store ofExchequer collections, when Cotton wrote a paperon a subject which they must have illustrated,it was An Abstract out of the Records of theTower touching the King's Revenue ; and WilliamPrynne's Aurum Reginae,l published in 1668, isalmost the first book in which the documents ofthe Exchequer were set out side by side withthose of the Chancery.

In 1683, more than six years after its author'sdeath, appeared A short Treatise concerningSheriffs Accompts by chief justice sir MatthewHale, who had been a judge in turn in all thethree Courts, and was chief baron of the Exchequer

William Hakewill, who on this subject, of whichdied in 1655, lso wrote a work several manuscripts are pre-

served.

from 1660 to 1671. It s value lies not only in thelucid form in which the method of the accountis stated but also in the fact that the authordescribes a system as he saw it at work which inprinciple had changed but little for centuries.

little handbook must not be brought intowith the massive treatise written by

Thomas Madox a generation later. Madox hadthe advantage of being himself a clerk in thelord treasurer's remembrancer's office and after-wards in the office of augmentation, and hisHistory and Antiquities of the Exchequer is theproduct of ripe learning and of profound studyof rolls and other records. It is a storehouse whichwill always be consulted with profit for the fullness,the precision, and the certainty of the materialswhich it contains. It s faults are first that , in spiteof a careful classification and of a clear divisionmade between the Exchequer before and afterthe accession of Henry 111, the materials provedunmanageable in the author's hands ; much in-formation will be found in what is not obviouslyits proper place, and facts relative to the ' secondperiod ' are related under the ' first ' and con-versely : and secondly, that the author's extrememodesty prevented him from denying statementscurrent in his day which his superior learningwould have justified him in refuting. That thereare also gaps even in Madox's wonderful equip-ment eed not be concealed ; but his book remains


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18 T E X T S A N D C O M M E N T A R I E S Ia monument of erudition of which any countrymight be proud.

After Madox we wait for more than a centurybefore any work of importance was done in relationto the Exchequer. The appointment of the firstRecord Commission in 1800 followed by others downto 1831 led to the publication of a large numberof reports on the contents of manuscript collectionsand of editions of unprinted materials both fromthe Chancery and the Exchequer; but the taskof criticism and exposition came later. Hunter 'spreface to the Pipe Roll of 1130 is almost the onlypublication issued by the Commission which bearsdirectly on our present subject. The masterlyObservations on the Great Rolls of the Exchequerof Normandy, which Thomas Stapleton prefixedto his edition of the Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniaein 1840, stand outside the official series. They andthe admirable treatise by Lkopold Delisle on theRevenus publics en Normandie, printed in the~ i b l i o t h e ~ u ee l'ecole des Chartes between 1848and 1852,~ aid the foundations of the scientificstudy of the fiscal system ol the Norman kings.Bishop Stubbs illustrated its parallel working inEngland in some ranges of its operation in thepreface to the second volume of the Gesta Henrici,l

2nd series, V, vi ; 3rd Richard I known com~ilonlyseries, i, iii. under the name of BenedictThe Chronicle of the of Peterborough, 1867.Reigns of Henry I1 and

IM O D E R N P U B L I C A T I O N S I9

and gave a compendious description of the wholein his constitutional History of England.' For theDialogue on the Exchequer Professor LiebermannPs~inleitung,published in 1875, is of permanentvalue.TIle foundation of the Pipe Roll Society in 1884

an impetus to the study in greater detailof the subject to which it was devoted; and to

one are we more indebted t han to Mr. J. HoraceRound, who in a large number of scattered papershas treated it with the sure grasp of an expertauditor and with an unequalled knowledge of thepersonal and territorial conditions of the twelfthcentury. Among smaller contribut ions I shouldmention an article by Mr. G. J. Turner on theSheriff's Farm, which appeared in the Transactionsof the Royal Historical Society for 1898 ,~anda modest essay entitled Compotus Vicecom.itis,which was published by Professor Parow of theFriedrichs-Werdersche Oberrealschule at Berlin in1906 and represents a great deal of laborious an dcareful work. The introduction to the Oxfordedition of the Dialogue published in 1902 has thespecial merit of having been wri tten by men who bytheir official position lived in constant touch withthe records. It s scholarly cautiousness commands

and though not professing to give a completedescription of the Exchequer system, it is the

' 126. New Series, xii. 117-149.


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20 TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES Inearest approach t o such a description which wepossess.

In the following lectures I propose to discuss inturn the manner in which money was paid and thesystem of account ; the source from which thissystem was derived and t he organization by whichit was carried out on the par t of the centraladministration and of the local officers ; finallyI shall say something about the Exchequer asa Court of law.

1 There are unfortunately agood many misprints, particularlyin the references.

THE -4NCIETu'T TREASURYWHAT o we know of the way in which the king'srevenue was paid and of the officer or officers who

supervised its receipt before the Norman Conquest ?Modern writers have had no difficulty about thematter : ' The King's "Hoarder ",' says Freeman,l' was as old as the king's " hoard ". Under theNorman kings he appears under the Latin titleof Treasurer.' But in fact the word 'hoard 'is never found as a designation of the king'streasure or treasury, and 'hoarder ' (hordere) isthat merely of a land-steward ; it is, as bishop

1 Norman Conquest, v(1876) 434.

2 In the Anglo-Saxon Lawsthe meaning is clear. Athel-stan ii. 10 forbids any one toexchange cattle without thewitness either of the reeveor the masspriest or the land-lord or the hordere. Similarlyin Edmund iii. 5 (preservedonly in the Latin of theQuadripartitus) no one is todeal with an unknown beastwithout th e witness of t hehead-reeve or the priest or thehordarius or the portreeve.Athelstan ii. 3. I, 2, prescribes

certain penalties against aman who is privy to his slave'stheft, and adds that t he samerule shall apply to ' any king'shordere or one of our reeves '.A domestic regulation, Cnutii. 76. I a, requires a housewifeto keep th e key of her hor-d e ~ %or store-closet, whichthe Latin translates dispensa.Disfiensator was an equiva-lent of ' steward '. In theAnglo-Saxon version of th eRule of S t. Benedict (ed.H. Logeman, 1888) horderetranslates cellararius (cap.d)


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22 THE ANCIENT TREASURY II II THE KING'S CHAMBERLAIN 23Stubbs clearly pointed out , ' not the name of a greatofficial.' The statement about the ' hoard ' aswell as the modernized name ' hoarder ' seems tobe due to Freeman ; but the hordere was suggestedby Kemble, who in his accustomed way mixes upa good deal of sound fact with unsupported con-jectures : ' The names,' he says,2 ' by which theChamberlain was designated are Hrzegel pegn,literally thane or servant of the wardrobe, Cubicu-larius, Camerarius, Burpegn, perhaps sometimesDispensator, and Thesaurarius or Hordere.' Hethen describes his functions by the help of theaccount given by Hincmar of the arrangementsof the Carolingian court in the middle of theninth century, and proceeds to give a list of thepersons whom he has found holding the ~ f f ic e .~

For these he cites eight charters, six of which headmits to be open to suspicion. They contain thetitles hraglpegn, burjegn, camerarius, and cubicu-l a ~ i u s . ~lorence of Worcester adds the namedispensator. I omit stiweard, which comes froma glaring f ~ r g e r y . ~ astly there is one mentionof a tlzesaurarius found in a Wilton chartulary ofthe thirteenth century ; the person so designatedappears in another authority under the Anglo-

1 Constitutional History of 4 This last is from a four-England, 12; in a note. teenth-century manuscript.2 The Saxons in England, 6 Codex Diplomaticus, no.ii. 104, ed. 1876. 899.

P. 105. 6 Ibid., no. 320.

Saxon name of hru?lJen.l Kemble did not quotethe one definite example of a treasurer knownfrom early evidence. At the time of the Domesdayinquest Henry the treasurer held Soberton, Eastley,and Nutley in Ha mp ~h ir e. ~ rom the Liber Win-toniensis, a sui-vey drawn up between 1103 and1115'~ we learn that he held lands in the city ofWinchester in th e reign of Edward the Confessor.4I t is not however said that he was treasurer attha t date. The title cannot be proved to belongto any one before the Norman Conquest.

The 'hoarder ' then rests upon a mistake.The 'hoard ' is never used to mean a treasury.The treasurer has no pre-conquest evidence. Theonly names that we can rely on are the Anglo-Saxon hragljegn and burjegn and the Latin came-rarius and cubicularius, though none of these iscited by Kemble from authorities at all near theAnglo-Saxon period. The Latin names howeverdo in fact appear in genuine contemporarycharters, and the English ones are attested byearly evidence of a different sort.6 They will help

Thorpe, DiplomatariumAnglicanum, p. 170.Fo . 49 a.See Round, in the Vic-toria History of t he Countiesof England, Hampshi re , i(1900) 527 f . The existingmanuscript was written about1150 : see a facsimile givenby the New Palaeographical

Society, part ix (1911) plate212.4 Domesday Bo ok, iv. 539a.

6 Dr . L. M. Larson has col-lected the evidence in a valu-able thesis on The King'sHousehold in England be-fore the Norman Conquest(Madison, Wisconsin, 1904)PP. 124-133-


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24 THE ANCIENT TREASURY 11us to identify the officers-for they were moreth an one-who had charge of the king's moneymatters and whose title survived until 1826.The burpegn, the servant of the king's boweror chamber, was the chamberlain. He was alsocalled the hr ~g lj eg n r servant of the wardrobe.The Chamber was the place where the treasurewas kept. To this day the Chamber of London isthe financial office of the City, and the chamber-lain is the treasurer. The distinction between

' public revenue and the king's privy purse wasunknown, and all money that came to the crownmay be presumed to have been paid in to theChamber. The other name, th at of the hrwgljegn,is not less significant, because the Wardrobe fromthe beginning of the thirteenth century can beshown to have done a large amount of the financialbusiness of the c0untry.l The king's privy sealcame in time to be the special instrument of i tsadministration, and thus, though the offices ofthe Wardrobe were abolished in 1782,~ he nameof the Lord Privy Seal continues its tradit ion tothe present day.I have said that the Anglo-Saxon bower thanesor rail thanes were more tha n one. King Eadredin his will made gifts to three classes of high

officers of 80 mancuses of gold, to the appointed--

1 T. F. Tou t, in the English By the statute of 22Historical Review xx iv (1909) George 111, cap. 82.496.

II THE CHAMBERLAINS 25dish thanes, the appointed rail thanes, and theappointed birels (or butlers),-a warning againstour assuming tha t the Frankish order of foursingle great officers of the household, the chamber-lain, the seneschal, the butler, and the constable,'was imported into England. Of chamberlains wehad more than one ; there were two in theTreasury down to 1826. But th e chamberlainswere laymen, and when accounts came to be keptit would be necessary to have an educated man,a clerk, to supervise their drawing up. This officeris known later on as the treasurer. Henry thetreasurer, whom I have mentioned as holding landsunder Edward the Confessor, may possibly haveborne that title before the Norman Conquest, butwhat that title was in Anglo-Saxon is unknown.I suppose he was one of the king's chaplains, andhe may have had no vernacular name, any morethan the other chaplain whom the Normanscalled the ~hancellor.~ ven when the treasurer

1 Hincmar, de Ordine Pala-tii, xxii, xxiii (ed. V. Krause1894) PP. I7 .

2 This seems to be the ex-planation of the descriptionof Ragnbold flreost a s Ragin-bold cancellarius or canceler.The evidence for his havingborne th e title of chancellorunder Edward the Confessoris insufficient. Th e subscrip-tion Raimballd canceli? is a t-

tached to a grant by Edwardthe Confessor of Wargraveto the Old Minster at Win-chester, Cotton Charter x.17 ; but th e document thoughin form a diploma differs fromevery knownspecimen of a pre-conquest diploma in the factsthat i t i s wri t ten in Anglo-Saxon and th at i t once bore aseal. The handwriting pointsto he reignof William theco n-


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26 THE ANCIENT TREASURY I I I1 RENTS IN K IND 27acquired a substantial position, he ranked afterthe chief chamberlain and only received the sameallowances so long as he was engaged in theservice of the Court. This was how he stood inthe reign of Henry I. It was only when theaccount came to take the first place and thecustody of the money the second, tha t the orderwas reversed, and the treasurer ranked beforethe two chamberlains.

As for the manner in which the king's treasurewas supplied before the Norman Conquest therequeror : see the Facsimiles of tonian MS. Tiberius C. ix. ofAncient Charters in the Brit- the fourteenth and fifteenthish Museum, iv (1878) 37. In centuries (ibid. , no. 813). TheDomesday Book he appears other three were printed fromas Reimbaldus de Cirecestre a chartulary by sir Thomas(fo. 63), Rainbaldus presbiter Phillipps n Archaeologia, xxvi(fo. 166 b), Rainboldus pres- (1836) 256 ; one of them bearsbiter (fo. 65 b) . In two other the rubric, Carta regis Wille lmiplaces (fo. 56 b, 68 b) pres- confirmantis totam iossessionembiter is an interlineation. In Reinbaldi cancellarii. I there-fo. 180 b the word canceller is fore doubt whether Rainbaldlikewise inserted above the can be proved to have beenline. Raegnbald is also men- styled chancellor before thetioned in ten charters. Seven Norman conquest. Mr. Roundof these were known to however thinks otherwise: seeKemble, who marked five of Feudal England, 1895, p. 421,them as suspicious : the other and The Officers of Edwardtwo come from the Codex the Confessor, in the EnglishWintoniensis, written in the Historical Review, xix (1904)second quarter of the twelfth 92. Compare Mr. W. H.century (Codex diplomaticus, Stevenson's note, ibid., xino. 891) and from the Cot- (1896) 731.

is no evidence beyond the materials incidentallygiven in Domesday Book. From these it resultsthat, although many items in the revenue werepaid in kind, they were computed in money : thevalue of the cattle or corn or honey was an ascer-tainable and ascertained value. Bishop Richard,who it must be admitted, is not consistent withhimself on this mat ter, gives the traditionalaccount of the system as he had heard it :

1 As it has been handed down to us by our fathers,in the early stat e of the kingdom after the Conquest,the kings received from their manors no t sums of goldor silver but only payments in kind (victualia) whichfurnished the necessaries for the da ily use of t he king'shousehold. And the officials appointed for the businessknew how much was due from each manor. . . . I havemyself seen people who have seen provisions broughtup to the court at appointed times from the king'smanors : and the officials of t he king's household knewprecisely from which counties wheat was due, and fromwhich various kinds of fleshmeat a nd horses' forage andother requisites. Now when these were paid accordingto the appoin ted manner of each thing , the king's officialsaccounted for them to t he sheriff reducing them t o a sumof money, as

for a measure of wheat for bread for IOO men IS.for the carcase of a grass-fed ox IS.for a ram or ewe 4d.for provender for zo horses 4d.The tradition thus recorded in the Dialogue maybe verified in Domesday Book. I t seems that the

1 Dialogus i. 7 pp. 193 f.


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28 THE A N C IE N T T R E A S U R Y 11duty of providing for the mainteilailce of the king'shousehold for each day had at one time beendivided among his manors. Some were chargedwith the entire jrma unius diei or noctis as theiryearly rent ; others with half or three-quartersof such a farm ; in other cases again severalmanors were grouped together to supply the sameamount. That these provender rents were valuedin money can be shown from some examples inHampshire. In the time of Edward the ConfessorBasingstoke, Kingsclere, and Hurstbourn paid oneday's farm ; he amount is not stated.l Broughtonpaid 76 16s. 8d., it is not said for what. ButBarton Stacey and Eling are each separatelycharged with 38 8s. 4d., for the farm of halfa day. Two other manors are described as worth76 16s. 8d.2 This sum is manifestly the amountat which the day's farm was accounted for to thesheriff ; and the recurrence of so peculiar a figureas 76 16s. 8d. suggests tha t i t is a modificationof ail earlier round sum. But what this earlierfigure was it is hard to say. It cannot be anaddition on account of deficiency of weight ;for there is no number of pounds which addedto an equal number of multiples of pence will bringout the exact sum of 76 16s. 8d.3 One is led

1 Cf. Spelman, Glossarium, His tor y of Ham psh ire, i. 401-s. v. Firm a. 403.The figures are collected 3 Thus 75 with an addi-by Mr. Round in the Victoria tion of 6d. in th e pound comes

11 THE FARM O F O N E D A Y 29therefore to suppose that this figure representsa larger sum reduced by an estimate of thedepreciation of the coins. Now 80 diminishedby gid. in the pound leaves exactly 76 16s. 8d.,and this I suggest to be the earlier amount ofthe farm of one day. In the time of t he Domesdaysurvey the 76 16s. 8d. is found to be increasedto 104 12s. 2d. not only in Basingstoke and itsneighbours,l but also at Broughton, Barton Stacey,and Eling. Similar figures are found in Somerset :in two instances 106 0s. ~ o d . , n two others100 10s. gid., in one 105 17s. 4+d.2 They defyanalysis ; but they look as though they representeda sum between 95 and 98 enhanced by paymentby weight. However this may be, it appears thatin certain definite instances the farm of one day ornight amounted before the Conquest to somethinglike 80, and after to something approaching 100.This result is not impaired by the fact that inmost cases the one day's farm was very con-siderably reduced. The original application havingbeen forgotten, the amount was for various reasonsto 76 17s. 6d. ; 74 with anaddition of gd. in the poundto L76 15s. 6d. Th e excess of~ o d .n th e one case, and thedeficiency of 14d. in th e otherdo not represent a differenceof a halfpen ny in the pound.

1 This is not stated inDomesday Book, but in an

inquest of 1274 in the Hun -dred Rolls ii. 220 (where thefigure is given as 104 IZS.),cited and explained by Mr.Round, Victoria History ofHampshire, i. 401 f.2 Round, Feudal England,p. 111: The Commune ofLondon, pp. 71 f .


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30 THE A N C IEN T TREASURY 11diminished in the same way as other paymentswere altered. In Oxfordshire the night's farmwas 50 ; at Beeding in Sussex it had been inking Edward's time 95 0s. 6d., afterwards*50,and a t the time of Domesday 10. All I amconcerned to show is that this farm bears tracesof having been at one time a nearly uniform sum,based upon a definite obligation of a payment inkind. But the commutation was generally estab-lished before the Norman Conquest. There is alsoevidence that the gross sums for which the sheriffswere responsible had been, a t least in certain cases,compounded for by a fixed farm as early asthe time of Edward the Confessor, and that thesheriff was authorized to deduct from the amountpayable by him the annual value of lands whichthe king had granted away.l Whether thereforecattle or wheat or silver pennies were rendered atthe Treasury, they were reckoned in money, andit is certain from Domesday that the moneypaid was required in many cases to be subjectedto a test ; that is to say, an additional sum ofmoney had to be tendered in order to make goodthe deficiency shown by the assay. This modeof payment is called ' blank ', and I shall have oftento speak about i t hereafter. I only mention it herebecause there has been a good deal of misunder-standing on the subject. In the Dialogue it is

1 See Round, The Commune of London, pp. 72 f.i. 4 p. 176.

,, BLANK FARM IN DOMESDAY BOOK 31stated positively that Domesday makes absolutelyno mention of this form of payment, and thisassertion was unfortunately repeated by bishop~ t u b b s . ~ ut as long ago as Charles 11's timethe facts were perfectly understood. Sir MatthewHale quotes the statement in the Dialogue thatit was set on foot by Roger bishop of Salisbury withthe comment ' though in truth it were much moreancient, as appears by frequent passages in theBook of Doomsday '.2 The existence of such asystem indicates a relatively advanced machineryat the Treasury. I t requires not merely the officialsof the Receipt, but also skilled workmen possessedof such chemical knowledge as was needed forthe purpose of the assay.In Domesday Book payments in blank moneyseem to have been made almost exclusively fromthe king's lands, where one would expect a strictsystem to be first adopted; and it has beenmaintained that no private landholders everreceived payment blank and that any instancewhich appears to indicate that they did can beaccounted for by special circumstance^.^ Themost common mode of payment was by tale, adnumerum, but there are many examples also ofpayment by weight, ad pensum. The two methodsmight be combined, as when the counted pennies

1 Constitutional History of ing Sheriffs Accompts, p. 22.England, 3 126 in a note. 3 Introduction to the Dia-A Short Treatise concern- logus, pp. 33 ff.


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32 THE ANCIENT TREASURY 11were required to be twenty to the 0unce.l If thecoins were weighed, of course the payer had t omake good the deficiency, which might amountto as much as 16d. in the pound : 2 if he paid bytale later usage suggests that a fixed deductionwas made from every pound he paid ; as soonas we have definite information we find the deduc-tion to be uniformly at the rate of 5 per cent. orone shilling in the pound.Another mode of payment is spoken of in theDialogue as of earlier use than th at by weight.This is payment a t a fixed rate, ad scalam, that isby paying a vantage-money of 6d. in the pound inaddition to the sum due.3 It has been suggestedthat this plan was adopted in 1108, when thecoinage was reformed, and that when a secondreform was made in 1125 payment ad $ens.um wasenf~rced .~Undoubtedly payment ad scalam isfound in Henry 1's reign, and seems to have falleninto disuse before 1130.~ But I am not a t all surethat it meant anything but blank payment, takenon an average, without going to the trouble ofperforming the assay. If in a particular place themoney was found ordinarily to be pretty good,1 Introduction to the Dia- logus, p. 38.logus, PP. 34 f. Sir Matthew Hale indeed2 See an example from the cited ad scalam from ' he an-Roll of 1130 in Round's Com- cient pipe rolls ' (pp. 21 f. ) ;mune of London, pp. 91 f. but Madox (ix. 2 p. 188)could3 i. 7 p. 194. not find any instances of such4 Introduction to the Dia- payments.

PAYMENTS AD SCALAM A N D AD PENSUM 33so that sixpence of advance would suffice to meetthe loss by the assay, it might be agreed to dis-pense with the test and accept the additionalsixpence. In later times this was undoubtedly thecase. What is certain is th at there are two writs ofHenry I referring to the same payment, one ofwhich describes the amount as 25 ad scalamand the other as 25 blank ; and that there canbe no dispute about the exact amount is shownby the fact that when under Henry I1 the moneywas paid by tale, the sum demanded was increasedby 12s. 6d.2 As this was now recorded by tale thesheriff was the loser : he had to pay out 25 12s. 6d.,but was only credited with a deduction of this sumless a shilling in the pound, tha t is with 24 6s. I O $ ~ . ~But we possess in fact no evidence as to themanner in which accounts were kept of the moniespaid, beyond the tradi tion reported in the Dialoguethat the old name for the Exchequer was Tallies ;that is, that the method which preceded that of

They are enrolIed amongthe Chartae Antiquae, N. I5and 16 in the Public RecordOffice : see the quotations inMadox, ubi supra.See Round, The Com-mune of London, pp. 85 ff .Possibly it was this in-convenience which led to theadvance being raised to ashilling instead of sixpence

in the thirteenth century.Thus in the close roll of19 Henry I11 m. 2 (CloseRolls 1234-1237,1908, p. 150)Eleanor countess of Pembrokeis discharged of ;6135 blanco-rum, que extense sunt adk141 15s. The writ is citedin error by Hale, pp. 28 f . , asof the 13th year.


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34 THE ANCIENT TREASURY 11counting on a chequered board was that of reckon-ing the cuts and notches on split sticks. Thereis no reason for doubting the antiquity of thissystem of tallies, which survived until 1826 sideby side with a more modern system. But it maybe doubted whether bishop Richard is correctin saying that the place of payment was calledthe Tallies1 At least the only example that hasbeen noticed of a transaction which in la ter timeswould have been described as at the Exchequeris said to have been done in the Treas~ry.~ t

1 ' Although a table of thissort is called scaccarium, thename is transferred so thatthe court itself which is atthe session of the scaccariu~nis also called scaccarium ; sotha t if a man obtain anythingby its sentence or if anythingbe appointed by its commoncounsel, it is said to be doneat the Exchequer of such andsuch a year. But what isnow called ad scaccarium wasformerly called ad taleas : 'Dialogus i. I p. 171.

2 This is a plea at Win-chester in the Treasury, sometime after Jul y 1108 andbefore the summer of 1113:see Mr. Round's paper on theEar ly Custody of DomesdayBook, in The Antiquary, xvi(1887)9, and Feudal England,

pp. 142 f., 1895. I t is printedin the Chronicon Monasteriide Abingdon (ed. J. Steven-son, 1858), ii. 116, and runsas follows :

' Mathildis Angliae reginaRoberto episcopo Lincolniensiet Thomae de Sancto Iohanneet omnibus baronibus Franciset Anglis de Oxenefordscirasalutem.'Sciatis quod Faritius abbasde Abbendona in curia dominimei et mea apud Wintoniamin thesauro ante Rogerum epi-scopum Salesberiensem et Ro-bertum episcopum Lincolnien-sem et Richardum episcopumLundoniensem et Willielmumde Curceio et Adam de Port etTurstinum capellanum et Wal-terum de Gloecestria et Her-bertum camerarium et Williel-

11 THE TREASURY AT WINCHESTER 35is however possible that the Tallies may have beena popular name for it.

This Treasury was kept in the king's castleat Winchester.l Henry the treasurer had a housethere even before the Norman c o nq ue ~t ,~nd after-wards he acquired three manors in Harn~shire.~One of the king's chamberlains also held the manorof Hartley Mauditt in Hampshire by serjeaiityat the Treasury. His ancestor William Mauduitpossessed it in the time of Domesday Book.4 Heheld also Porchester, ' where, under Henry 11,we find treasure s tored on its way to Normandy.One is tempted,' says Mr. Round, ' to see in thispractice the reason why Porchester was held bythe Domesday chamberlain of the treasury. ' Hiswidow had ' a house outside the gate of Win-mum de Oileio et Goisfredumfilium Herberti et Willielmumde Enesi et Radulfum Bas-set et Goisfredum de Magna-villa et Goisfredum Ridel etWalterum archidiaconum deOxeneford, et per Librum deThesauro disrationavit quodLeuecanora manerium suuinnihil omnino debet in hun-dredo de Perituna facere ; sedomnia quae debet facere, tan-tummodo in hundredo Leua-canora facere debet, in quohundredo habet ecclesia deAbbendona x. et vii. hidas.'

1 Chronicon Monasterii deAbingdon, ii. 116.2 In Wenegenestret : LiberWinton. p. 539.3 Domesday Book fo. 49 .4 In Domesday Book fo. 47bWilliam Maldoit held withother lands Herlege (HartleyMauditt), Porcestre (Porches-ter) , and Seldern (Shalden).5 Victoria History of Hamp-shire, i. 432. William Mau-duit is not however styledchamberlain in DomesdayBook.


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36 T H E A N C I E NT T R E A S U R Y IIchester with land in Fuller's Street and houseslikewise '.l The lands went with the chamberlain-ship and were held afterwards by the two sonsRobert and Wi l l i am.Vhe offices of treasurerand chamberlain, as we have seen, were closelyassociated, and for centuries to come every writof issue from the Chancery was addressed to themconjointly. It was natural that they should havebeen endowed with land in the neighbourhood ofthe place where their duties lay.

The Treasury was much more than a store-house of money and other valuables. ' Wherethy treasure is, there shall thy heart be also 'was appropriately quoted by the author of theDialogue : it was the very centre of the ad-ministration of the Court. There was keptDomesday Book to be referred to as evidence oftenure, and there early in Henry 1's reign we findthe whole court sitting to decide a dispute as tothe dues of the abbot of Abingdon and decidingit by reference to Domesday Finance andjudicature from the first, it may be believed, wenttogether ; and we shall see hereafter that theassociation continued down to the reforms of the

1 Round in The Ancestor, the chamberlainship were heldv (1903) 208, from Add. MS. by Robert's son-in-law Wil-28024 in th e B ritish Museum. liam of Pon t de llArche.2 Ibid., pp. 208 f . ; The i. 5 p. 177 and 14 p. 207.Communeof London,pp. 81ff. 4 Above p. 34 note 2.For some time the lands and

11 T H E T R EA S U RY U N D ER H E N R Y I 37nineteenth century. In like manner anotherpiece of evidence of about the same time does notcertainly mark an innovation, but it is the earliestexample that has been brought to light of a royalwrit ordering a sheriff to make a specific paymentin accordance with an enrolment. It was publishedlast spring by Dr. J. Armitage Robinson, nowdean of Wells, in his work on Gilbert CrispinAbbot of WestminsterI1 and runs as follows :

Hen ry King of t he Engl ish t o Richard de Monte gree t ing .Cause t he Abbot of W estmins t er t o have 10 hillings ofmy a lms, as i t i s i n my ro ll s. Wi tness t he Bi shop ofSal isbury a t Cannock . And th i s every year . Wi tnessthe same.2Here we have several features of interest. First,the king orders the sheriff to make a payment ofalms such as those for which, when the pipe rollsare preserved, we find him regularly asking forallowance as a deduction from his farm. Secondly,the order was recorded on the rolls.3 This may

1 P. 149 o, 32.2 Henricus rex Angl. Ri-cardo de Monte salutem. fac

habere a bbati Westm' xsolidos de elemosina mea,sicut est in rotulis meis. T'episcopo Sa rum [thus printed]apud Canoc. E t hoc quoqueanno. Teste eodem : from aWestminster chartulary, Cot-to n MS. Faus tina A. iii. fo. 79.In 1100 Henry I issued a

writ to Eudo the steward andHerbert the chamberlain or-dering that the convents ofWestminster, Winchester, andGloucester should have @le.na-ria liberatio from him at hisfeasts and that their chantersshould have a n ounce of gold.But no reference is made toany rol l : the authori ty i soral-' as bishop Mau rice ofLondon has borne witness


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38 THE ANCIENT TREASURY I Ieither mean that the great roll of the year whichwe call the pipe roll was already in existence, orelse that the king's writs were already enrolled ina form of which we have no example before thereign of John : the former alternative is the moreprobable. Thirdly, the order for a single paymentis changed into a permanent charge by the addi-tion of the words Et hoc quoque anno, with thewitness repeated.

I wish we could fix the date of this writ, whichDr. Robinson places approximately between 1110and Easter 1116. I t belongs to a time when thesystem of account had been reduced to roll ; itwas no longer a mere matter of comparing the cutstha t they had in the time of ii. 43) : but he witnesses asmy predecessors (Robinson, camerarius (ibid., p. 52), andGilbert Crispin, p. 141 no. 18). this is his tit le in the WintonSir Francis Palgrave long ago survey (Domesday Book iv .pointed out tha t this oral 531, 534, 558). The Lans-witness is the primary mean- downe MS . 114 fo. 55 (aing of ' ecord ' : Rise and sixteenth-century transcriptProgress of the English Com- among the Burghley papers)monwealth, i. 145 ff., 1832. contains a record of the in-Compare the use of recordatio spection of a charter ofin the Dialogus ii. 20 p. 240. Henry I in rotulo regis underAs for Herbert he is styled Henry I1 ; but Mr. Round' the king's treasurer of Win- thinks th at this referencechester ' in a charter of about may be to Roll N. of the1x00-1x08 (ibid., p. 146 no. Chartae Antiquae at the Pub-27), and described by t he lic Record Office written inchronicler of Abingdon as regis Henry 11's time (The Com-cubicularius et thesaurarius in mune of London, p. 88), fromWilliam Rufus's time (Chroni- which the charter is printedcon Monasterii de Abingdon by Madox ix. 2 p. 188r.

11 THE BARONS OF THE EXCHEQUER 39and notches on tallies. About the same time thereemerges the name scaccarium or Exchequer : it isin a writ of Henry I to Roger bishop of Salisburyand the barons of the Exchequer ratifying a giftwhich his queen Matilda had made to the canonsof Holy Trinity in London from the 25 blankwhich the king had given her from the farm ofthe city of Exeter. The document is earlier thanMay 1118, when queen Matilda died. The witnessis Geoffrey of Clinton,l who had been a t the Courtin 1115 or earlierJ2and who is found somewhatlater, after the king's second marriage in 1121,to have been treasurer and ~harnberlain.~Aswe have found the king's court in session a tthe Treasury, so we now find the barons of theExchequer entrusted with judicial powers. Theking commands bishop Richard Belmeis of London' to do full right to the abbot of Westminster astouching the men who broke into his church ofWinton [Wenington, Essex] by arms at night.And unless you do it, my barons of the Exchequerwill cause it to be done, that I hear no complaintthereof for default of right '.4

Madox, 1. c., from ChartaeAntiquae N. 16.2 He witnesses with Ranulfthe chancellor and R. Basseta charte r of Henry I printedby Dr. Robinson, p. 147 no.29 from the WestminsterChartulary D. fo. 516 b.

Madox, p. 40 a, fromChartae Antiquae 00. 12.' Henricus rex Angl' Ri-cardo episcopo de Lundon'sal'. Mando tibi ut faciasplenum rectum abbat i Westm'de hominibus qui fregeruntecclesianl suam de Winton'


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40 T H E A N C I E N T T R E A S UR Y 11The subject of the judicature a t the Exchequerwill come before us at a later stage.l Here I onlymention i t -in connexion with the appearance ofthe word at a date not later than 1118. The word

indicates a revolution in the method of auditingthe accounts ; it means the introduction of a pre-cise system of calculation worked out by counterson a chequered table and recorded on rolls.2noctu et armis. et nisi fece-ris, barones mei de scaccariofacian t fieri, ne au diam clamo-rem inde pro penuria recti : 'Robin son, p. 148 n. 31, fr omMS. Fa ustina A. iii. fo. 74.The witness is unfortunatelyomitted, and the editor givesth e wide margin of d ate 1108-1127. Mad ox could no t,' upon diligent search, findthe original writ in t he reposi-tory of the church of West-minster,' iv. 5 p. 121, andprinted it from the CottonianMS., vi. 2 p. 141 a. I t is alsogiven by Stapleton.

1 See below, ch apter viii.2 When Mr. Round says inThe Comm une of London ,pp. 80 f., th at ' the changefrom the "Treasury " t o t he" Exchequer " was . . . agradual process ', he appearsto mean that the word Ex-chequer only came graduallyinto use a s denoting the place

of payment a s well as theplace of audit. And this isshown by the instances, givenin his Calendar of D ocume ntsrelating to France, i. 354 f.,which describe the grantsmade to the monks of Tiron.First Henry I between 111and 1120 gave them 15 marksa year to be received dethesazlro meo in festo s. M i-chaelis Wintonie. Then theempress Matilda in July 1141confirmed this de thesauroWintoniensi,adding 5 marks ;the whole to be paid de jirnzaWinloniensi. In 1152-1154Henry du ke of th e Normansconfirmed the same grant dethesauro Wintonie. Finally in1156-7 He nry went back tothe original 15 marks, whichwas made payable from hist reasury at the Exchequer.Mr. Round states clearly inThe Comm une of London,pp. 74 f., the p recise meaning

11 INTRODUCTION O F T H E E X CH E QU E R 41henceforward the Treasury was limited to the~a y me nt nd storage of money ; he business ofaccount and the higher work of judicature passedto the Exchequer.

of th e introduction of the definite ac t which operatedExchequer, and that intro- at a definite date.duction must have been a


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111 THE ABACUS 43

THE RECKONING O F THE EXCHEQUERNOTHINGs more difficult to explain than a system

so familiar that most of us never think at allabout it . Yet our decimal system of arithmeticis the result of a long system of development.At an early time the scientific treatment of numberswas a part of geometry : ' the results of the fif thbook ' of Euclid ' n which the theory of proportionis considered apply to any magnitudes, and there-fore are true of numbers as well as of geometricalmagnitudes '.l When in the first century of ourera geometrical demonstrations were abandonedby Nicomachus, arithmetic was reduced to 'thestudy of the properties of numbers, and particu-larly of their ratios '.2 The work of Nicomachusformed the basis of tha t of Boethius four hundredyears later ; and this became the accepted text-book of the middle ages in the west. But thetheory of numbers, ratio, proportion, and theprogressions will not help you to ' do sums '.Ordinary practical calculations were not performed

1 W. W. Rouse Ball, A "bid., p. 98; cf. M. Cantor,Short Account of the History Vorlesungen iiber Geschichteof Mathematics (3rd ed. 1901) der Mathematik (2nd ed.,pp. 60 f. Leipzig 1894) i. 400 ff.

in writing, though the results were written down.The calculation was done by means of a sandedfloor or table called an abacus, afterwards bymeans of a tablecloth marked in squares or bymeans of a frame containing a number of countersstrung on wires.The reasons for this mechanical appliance weretwo-fold. First, the rudiments of calculation wereconsidered to be things which were necessary tobe taught to children but were undeserving ofscientific discussion. In the second place it waspractically impossible to perform an elementaryarithmetical calculation in writing by means of theGreek or Roman numerals. It was not merelythat their figures were cumbrous, but also thattheir decimal system was defective in that itlacked the essential element of zero, which did notcome into the west from the Arabs until a latedate.l Now the abacus supplied a simple meansfor addition and subtraction. If the floor wassanded the calculator made columns2 of grooves

1 Richer's statement, Hist.iii. 54, that Gerbert employednine notae for his calculationsis remarkably confirmed byDr. N. Bubnov's proof thatthe treatise on geometry at-tributed to Boethius, in whichnine figures nearly resemblingthe Arabic numerals appear,is a forgery of the eleventh

century, which so far as theabacus is concerned, is basedupon Gerbert. See his editionof Gerbert's Opera mathema-tics (Berlin 1899), especiallythe notes on pp. 157 f., 188 ff.But there is no trace of zerohere.2 There is evidence of anabacus with horizontal lines,


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34 THE RECKONI NG OF THE EXCHEQUER 111with a stick and placed as many counters in eachas he required. If he used a chequered cloth, thecounters were arranged within the vertical columns.Every column denoted a decimal stage : units,tens, hundreds, and so forth. The principle ofthe value of position was estab1ished.l Thus, whena column had no counter in it, there was nothingto count : the discovery of zero was for practicalpurposes a nt i~ ip at ed .~ ut this was only on thebut tha t with vertical col- tury , Mohammad ibn M6saumns is the only one tha t a1 Khuwarezmi, whose arith-need be mentioned in con- metical treat ise was translatednexion with our subject : see into Latin in the earlier part ofG . Friedlein, Die Zahlzeichen the twelfth century. Of thisund das elementare Rechnen work, Algoritmi de Numeroder Griechen und RGmer Indorum, a single manuscript(Erlangen 1869) pp. 23, 48 ff. exists of the thirteenth cen-1 This is clearly pointed out tury in t he University Libraryin the Dialogus i. 5 p. 183, at Cambridge (Ii. vi. 5 fo. IOZ),where the disciple says, 'Vi- from which it is printed bydere mihi videor fieri posse Boncompagni in the firstratione calculandi ut idem volume of his Tra tta ti dJAr it-denarius pro calculo missus metica, a work to which Inunc nummum, nunc solidum, have not been able to obtainnunc libram, nunc centum, access in the Bodleian Librarynunc mille significet.' or in theBriti sh Museum. But2 When zero was introduced no one recognized the name ofinto the Latin world the AlKhuwarezmi initsLatin formabacus was superseded by until M. Reinaud (Mkmoire surcalculations with the decimal I'Inde, Par is 1849, pp. 303 f.)notation, which was then and Michel Chasles (in thecalled algorism. I t derived Comptes rendus de 11Acad6mieit s name from the eminent des Sciences, xlviii. 1057 f.,Arab mathematician of the 1859). Both Chasles (p . 1059)early part of the ninth cen- and Cantor (i. 671) suggest

111 THE DECIMAL SYSTEM 45abacus, not in writing. Hence the calculation wasperformed by a mechanical process, and the resultwritten down afterwards.To introduce this decimal system into Englandmeant a great deal when we consider that thetraditions of the country ran not on decimal but011 duodecimal lines. The hide of land containeda hundred acres, but this was the long hundredof six score. The arithmetic table ran up notto a hundred but to h~nd tw e l f t i g . ~ he poundcontained 240 pennies. The pound's weight was12 ounces. To adopt in the place of this duo-decimal system one based upon tens and hundredswas in fact revolutionary. I t was not a change th atcould have come in by degrees; it must havebeen definitely devised by some one. I venturewith due reserve to submit a conjecture as to whoit was th at introduced the abacus, or a t leastthat the translation may bethe work of Adelard. Thetranslation of th e Liber Al-ghoarismi de Practica Arisme-trice by John of Seville, orperhaps John of Luna, be-longs to the next generation(Cantor, pp. 750 f.). To speakof ' the period of t he generalintroduction of " Arabic "numerals, coinciding perhapswith the use of the eastern" abacus" ', as is done inthe seventh volume of the

Publications of t he Pipe RollSociety, p. xviii, implies amisunderstanding of the wholesubject. The abacus was noteastern, and it was the intro-duction of Arabic numeralstha t led to its disuse.1 See Mr. W. H. Steven-son's paper on The long Hun-dred and its Use in England,in the Archaeological Reviewfor December 1889, iv (1890)313-322.


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46 THE RECKONING O F T HE E XCHE QUE R 111the manner in which the abacus was introduced,into the English Treasury.

We must first enquire what books of rulesexisted for the use of the abacus. The first namewe hear of in this connexion is th at of tha t greatman of science Gerbert, who ended his life as popeSilvester 11. But he mentions that as a youngman, perhaps about 970, he made use of a bookon the subject which cannot now be identified ;and before he himself wrote, a commentary on theCalculus of Victorius which includes the abacushad been composed by Abbot of F l e ~ r y . ~boutthe same time a treatise on the abacus was writtenby Heriger afterwards abbot of Lobbes3 Thesethree men were contemporaries and were mastersof the schools at Rheims, Fleury, and Li6ge. Theydied in 1003, 1004, and 1007. They wrote for thepurposes of teaching, and dealt mainly with multi-plication and division and fractions. I t is com-monly said that these treatises are based uponBoethius, but Dr. Bubnov has proved from anelaborate examination of the texts and of theirtransmission in manuscript that the book ongeometry attributed to Boethius in which the

1 See the preface to his See Chasles, in the ComptesRegulae de Numerorum Abaci rendus de 11Acad6mie desRationibus, in Bubnov, p. 6 ; Sciences, lxiv (1867) 1062 ff.cf. note 5. Bubnov, p. 205 and note I .Bubnov, p. 197 and note I.

111 WRITERS ON THE ABACUS 47is described is in fact a forgery of the

eleventh century compiled in a blundering wayfrom various sources and borrowing the wholeaccount of the abacus from Gerbert.l The in-fluence of Gerbert in the century after him isshown not only by this forgery which soughtto attach his work to a famous name of the sixthcentury, but also by the treatises of severalother writers on the abacus, among whom Berne-linus and Herman the Cripple of Reichenau arethe best known.2

At the beginning of the twelfth century twomore treatises on the subject were produced byMaster Ralph of Laon and by Adelard of Bath ;and there is also a brief collection of Regunculesuper Abacum, which was printed at Rome in

f Ibid., p. 188 note 23. Dr.J. Tropfke, in his Geschichteder Elementar - Mathematik(Leipzig 1902) i. 12 f., inclinesto this conclusion in regardto the abacus contained inthe Geometria of Boethius,but makes no mention ofDr. Bubnov's investigations.

See Cantor, i. 825-834.An extremely interestingmanuscript at S t. John's Col-lege, Oxford, cod. xvii, writ-ten for the most part inseveral hands of the earlypart of the twelfth century,contains a number of abacistic

--works, including those ofAbbo and Heriger, commen-taries on Gerbert, &c. Dr.Bubnov gives a list of them,pp. l ii , l i ii . Fo. g b waswritten in 1110, and t hehandwriting is unmistakablyEnglish. The manuscript be-longed to Thorney abbey,where it ma y have been writ-te n : see for instance fo. 29.It contains Anglo-Saxon en-tries-one on fo. 7 b fromBryhtfer8 the monk of R am-sey,-runes, and not a fewwords well written in Greekcharacters.


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48 THE RECKONING OF THE EXCHEQUER 1111882 from a manuscript in the Vatican library1by Enrico Narducci, in the fifteenth volume ofprince Baldassare Boncompagni's Bullettino diBibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze matematichee fisicheJ2and is of special interest to us because,like Adelard's treatise, it is of English origin. Itsauthor, Turchillus cornfioti~ta,~edicates his bookto Simon de RotoZ, apparently Simon of Rutland,who like him had learned his art from 'our vener-able master William R.' ; and whom William thewriter places above all the calculators now living.Turchill gives the plan of the abacus, with thesigns and names for the nine digits which were usedfor counters. 'These signs (Jigurae), ' he says,4 'asdonnus William I$ bears witness, we have fromthe Pythagoreans,' tha t is from the forgedBoethius; ' but the names from the Arabs.'Turchill deals with the use of the abacus for the1Cod. 3123, of the second

half of the twelfth century.2 Pp. 135-154. I owe this

reference to the kindness ofmy friend Mr. Haskins.

3 The editor's attempt toconnect the author with Thur-kill who saw his famous visionin Essex in 1206 (pp. 128 ff.)is ill-conceived. Apart fromthe question of date, theVision does not profess to bewritten by Thurkill, and isprobably by Ralph of Cogges-

hall : see H. L. D. Ward,Catalogue of Romances in theDepartment of Manuscripts inthe British Museum, ii (1893)506-514.

4 P. 136.6 See Bubnov, pp. 156 .,195 and the notes. Turchill

says (p. 150) that we have thename of one of the fractionsof the as non ab antiquis seda firedict0 Guillelmo & validis-simo calculatore.

111 TURCHILL'S TREATISE ON THE ABACUS 49practical purpose of working accounts. Thus hesays,1 When you first approach the abacus, that is the

science of the abacus, set ou t the debtors with thei rdebts ; draw three lines across the middle of the tab lelengthwise, and put the tokens representing each, that isthe number of those who pay and the number of wha tis to be paid, and arrange carefully the sum arising fromtheir multiplication. In the upper line put the debts,in the lower the debtors ; and the sum proceeding fromthese amounts in the middle. For example : supposethere are 23 knights, and each owes you six marks. Youwant to know what tota l number of marks is made upof these small sums, th at is, of 23 times 6 marks. In theupper line of the column of unit s, pu t a six for the 6marks that are owing ; and in the lower line put a 2 and3, a 2 in the column of tens and a 3 in the column ofunits for the 23 knights, because they are the debtors.The process which is given at length and occupiesa large quarto page is a tedious one, but it bringsout the required result, 138 marks. In anotherexample a pound is to be divided among 288workmen ; and each one is found to deserve ahalfpenny and a farthing and a third of a farthing,or as we should say more compendiously five-sixthsof a penny. The most interesting example occursnear the end :

Verbi gratia. Ducente marce sunt inter QD hidas divi-dende, que sunt hide totius Eisexie, ut ait Hugo Boco-landie.3

3 Bocolaudie in the manu-script,


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50 THE RECKONING OF THE EXCHEQUER 111' Two thousand five hundred hides are the hides ofall Essex, as says Hugh of Buckland.' The figure isnearly correct : in Domesday Book Maitland madeit 2,650.~But what strikes one is th at Hugh of Buck-land is spoken of as a living witness and in a personalway. Now Hugh is said to have been sheriff ofeight counties, and Essex was one of them.2 Hewas constantly employed during the earlier yearsof Henry I, but is not found mentioned after 1114and appears to have been dead in 1115.~ Thiswould seem to fix the date of our treatise. Itintroduces us to two men in England interestedin the reckoning of the abacus in the first yearsof the twelfth century, Turchill and Simon ofRutland, both disciples of the famous calculatorWilliam R. All these names are otherwise un-known to us ; but it is not impossible, as Pro-fessor C. H. Haskins suggest^,^ that the master maybe William bishop of Syrac ~se ,~o whom Adelardof Bath dedicated his treatise de Eodem et Diverso,as ' most learned in all mathematical arts .7

Domesday Book and be- pounds into marks addressedyond, 1897, p. 400. by Turchill to one Gilbert. I t sChronicon Monasterii de printed by Narducci, pp. 127f.Abingdon, ii. 117. Compare 5 In a paper which reachedMr. H. E. Salter's remarks in me after this lecture was inthe EnglishHistorical Review, print and which has since ap-xxvi (1911) 490. peared in the English Histori-See Robinson, Gilbert cal Review for January 1912Crispin, pp. 138, 148, 155. (xxvii. 103).The treatise is followed by From about 1104 to 1115.a letter on the conversion of A. Jourdain, Recherches

,,I RALPH O F LAON ON THE ABACUS 51Ralph's Liber de Abaco was published for thefirst time in 1890 from the only known manuscriptat Paris l by Dr. Alfred Nagl in the supplementto the th irty-fourth volume of the Zeitschrift fiir~a them at iknd Phy ~ik .~ nlike most abacists he

condescended to treat of subtraction and addit ionas well as of the more difficult processes. He alsoused signs for the digits which, as drawn in ourthirteenth-century manuscript, bear a close resem-blance to the Arabic numerals. What is moreinteresting is that he has a sign o resemblingzero, which he calls sipos (perhaps a corruptionof +7j+os) or rotula ; but he used it only formultiplicatioii and in a manner which, as hiseditor points is not only superfluous butconfusing for calculatioils on the abacus. Apartfrom this system of signs, which may have comedirectly or indirectly from Arabic sources, Ralphbases himself entirely on the traditional authorssuch as Gerbert and Herman of R ei~ henau .~Adelard's Regulae Abaci are preserved in threecritiques sur llAge et l'originedes Traductions Latines dlAri-stote (ed. C. Jourdain, ParisI843)4 P. 453.Formerly in the abbeyof St. Victor, cod. 534, nowin the National Library,Fonds Lat in 15120. Chaslesjust notices the existence ofth e book in th e Comptes

rendus de 11Acad6mie desSciences, xvi (1843) 162.Pp. 85-133.P. 91 ; Cantor, i. 842. Heused the sign as a mark toindicate the figure reached ina series of numbers to bemultiplied.

4 Cf. Nagl, p. 100.


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5 2 THE R E C K O N IN G O F THE EXCHEQUER IIImanuscripts a t Leyden, Paris, and Rome, from whichthe work was printed in 1881 by Prince BaldassareBoncompagni in the fourteenth volume of theBullettino di Eibliografia e di Storia delle Scienzematematiche e fisiche.l Adelard cites Gerbertmore than once, as the man pui hoc opus nostrisGallis restituit et regulis succintim compositis illu-stra~it,~ut he appears to rest principally on thebook attributed to Boethius and on an anonymoustreatise on fractions written perhaps in Gerbert'stime.3 I cannot however profess to have examinedthe relations of the work critically, a task forwhich I am not competent. All tha t concernsme is to show that he continues the line of abacistsof the tenth and eleventh centuries.Now Adelard left England towards the end ofthe eleventh century and studied as a young manat Tours, after which he engaged in teaching a tLaon. He left Laon probably not later than1109 in order to acquaint himself with the learningof the Arabs-he had already travelled as far assouthern Italy, but now he spent perhaps sevenyears in orie;ital t r a ~ e l . ~ t least in the prefaceto his Quaestiones naturales he says that sevenyears have passed since he quitted Laon, but itdoes not follow that the whole time was spent in

Pp. 91-134. 4 See especially Mr. Has-2 p. 91 lines 23, 24. kins's valuable paper in the3 Printed by Bubnov pp. English Historical Review,

227-244. xxvi (1911) 91-498.

111 ADELARD O F BATH 53the east. I must not here speak of the importantwork which Adelard accomplished in introducinglarge ranges of Arab science into the Latin world ;his translation of the astronomical tables of A1~huwarezmior his translation, also from theArabic, of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. I onlyadvert to his place as a leading pioneer in aprocess which altered the whole system of learningand teaching in western Europe, in order to fixthe date of his treatise on the abacus. That workbelongs to a time before he had come into contactwith the oriental literature of science, and maytherefore with little hesitation be assigned to thetime when he was occupied in teaching, andprobably in attending lectures too, at Laon inthe first decade of the twelfth century.

Laon was then a famous place of study, perhapsfor twenty years the most important school in thewest1 It seems to have been specially frequentedby mature scholars, such as were William ofChampeaux, Peter Abailard, and Gilbert of LaPorr6e. For this reason, I take it, Anselm thetheologian who gave the school its chief repute,was known as the doctor doctorum. But the youngerstudents were not forgotten, and Anselm's brotherRalph, the writer on the abacus, besides teachingtheology, gave instruction in the liberal arts.Laon had for some time past had a close con-- ompare my Illustrations of the History of MedicvalThought (1884) p. 111ff.


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54 T H E RE C KO N IN G O F T H E E XC H E Q U E R 111nexion with England. Helinand, a clerk of Edwardthe ConfessorJ1was made bishop of the see about1052 and held it for forty-six years until about1098. I t was apparently in his house thatWilliam of Corbeil, the future archbishop ofCanterbury, lived when engaged in the educationof the sons of Ralph the chancellor of the Englishking3 Some years late r the great justiciar, bishopRoger of Salisbury, sent to Laon his two nephews,Alexander and Nigel, afterwards bishops of Lincolnand Ely, and the younger of them treasurer. Theywere probably there during the time whefi Waldric,who had been chancellor to Henry I since 1103,was bishop of Laon ; that is to say, after 1106.~If Waldric's pontificate was tempestuous and notaltogether creditable, still the visits he paid toEngland helped to keep up the connexion.A striking illustration of the impress made upon

1 Guibert de Vita sua, iii. 2(ed. G. Bourgin, Paris 1907)pp. I30 f.2 Here I follow the late Mr.T. A. Archer, whose paper inthe English Historical Re-

view, ii (1887) 103-112, throwsmuch light on the relationsbetween England and Laonabout 1100.3 See Herman de Miraculissanctae Mariae Laudunensis,ii. 6, in Migne's Patrologia

Latins, clvi. 977. Mr. Archerbelieved Ralph to be RanulfFlambard, and it is known that

Ranulf had two sons whom hewas bringing up with a view toa clerical careet about 1102 :see Mr. Archer's paper, ubisupra, p. 108. But it is onthe whole more probable thatHe

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