Issue roll of Thomas de Brantingham, bishop of Exeter, Lord High Treasurer of England, containing payments made out of His Majesty's revenue in the 44th year of King Edward III A.D. 1370 / Translated from the original roll now remaining in the ancient Pell office, in the custody of the Right Honourable Sir John Newport, bart. By Frederick Devon.

  • Great Britain. Exchequer.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Issue roll of Thomas de Brantingham, bishop of Exeter, Lord High Treasurer of England, containing payments made out of His Majesty's revenue in the 44th year of King Edward III A.D. 1370 / Translated from the original roll now remaining in the ancient Pell office, in the custody of the Right Honourable Sir John Newport, bart. By Frederick Devon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to have been regularly arranged to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and must, at that period at least, have been sufficiently known to be rendered useful for the routine of the official business of the day. This conjecture is strengthened by a reference made to the importance and utility of these records, by Vernon, in his rare and useful book entitled “ Considerations for regulating the Exchequer,” published in 1642, and so often quoted as an authority by Chief Baron Gilbert, and by modern writers on the Court of Exchequer : and as it is the only treatise extant on the antiquity of this branch of the Exchequer, it may not be deemed irrelevant to cite the author in his own quaint though explicit lan- guage :— “ Howbeit* thus much I may say, that there are so many excellent records in the offices of the two remem- brancers, clerk of the pipe, and in the several Treasuries, both in the upper and lower Exchequer, as they may indeed be called Treasuries where those records are kept, they being the greatest treasure of the kingdom ; insomuch as I have heard a great lawyer say that he never under- stood what law was, till he came up those staires. And, to say the truth, there must needs bee more than ordi- nary matters, and great variety of them found in that Court, whither all the other Courts of the Kingdom, as rivers to the sea, in some kind or other have their resort.” Then speaking of the officers who had the custody of these records, he says : “ The officers in the inferior or lower Exchequer, com- monly called the Receipt, are these which follow, viz. “ The four tellers of the receipt. * Vernon’s Exchequer, p. 41, 42.