The purchase of the ‘ministerium thesauri Wintoniæ,’ recorded in the Pipe Roll of 1130,[164] does not affect the question of audit. There can be no question that the national Treasury, in 1130, was at Winchester, or that the Treasurer’s official residence was there also.[165] The really important passages on the roll, passages which I venture to think have been generally misunderstood, are these: Et in præterito anno quando comes Gloecestriæ et Brientius filius Comitis audierunt compotum de thesauro apud Wintoniam. De istis habuit Willelmus de Pontearc’ xxx li., de quibus reddidit compotum quando comes Gloecestriæ et Brientius audierunt compotum de thesauro apud Wintoniam. It has been assumed that these entries refer to the Exchequer business of balancing the sheriffs’ accounts, and Madox even went so far as to draw the conclusion, from their wording, that, at the time of the Roll, Brian Fitz Count was Treasurer. The true meaning was exactly contrary, and an interesting allusion is thus obscured. For the Pipe Rolls do not, as is sometimes imagined, display the national accounts. They probably do not exhaust the receipts (for some, it is believed, were paid ‘in camera’), and they certainly only record a portion of the royal expenditure. What became of the money which is so continually entered as paid ‘in Thesauro’? It found its way into the national treasury, whence it was paid out as was required by writ of ‘Liberate’ addressed to the Treasurer and chamberlains.[166] Of these outgoings, in the 12th century, there is, it would seem, no record; but they were certainly audited from time to time, the king calling on the Treasurer to account for the money in his charge, as, at the Exchequer, the Treasurer himself had called on the sheriffs to account for the sums for which they were liable. To this ‘generalis compotus,’ associated with the Winchester Treasury, there are, in the ‘Dialogus,’ several allusions which may have been somewhat overlooked. Quod thesaurarius a vicecomite compotum suscipiat, hinc manifestum est, quod _idem ab eo cum regi placuerit requiritur_.... Sunt tamen qui dicunt thesaurarium et camerarios obnoxios tantum hiis quæ scribuntur in rotulis ‘in thesauro,’ ut _de hiis compotus ab eis exigatur_ (i. 1). Raro inquam, hoc est, _cum a rege, vel mandato regis, a magnis regni[167] compotus a thesaurario et camerariis regni totius recepta suscipitur_ (i. 5). Thesaurarius et camerarii, nisi regis expresso mandato vel præsidentis justiciarii, susceptam pecuniam non expendunt: oportet enim ut habeant auctoritatem rescripti regis de distributa pecunia, _cum ab eis compotus generalis exigitur_ (i. 6). [De combustione] ... ut de summa ejus _thesaurarius et camerarii respondeant_ (ib.).