The Commune of London, and other studiesRound, John Horace
History
The Commune of London, and other studies
Round, John Horace
Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154; London (England) -- History -- To 1500
The change from the “Treasury” to the “Exchequer” was, I hold, a
gradual process. Careful study of the annual revenues bestowed by our
sovereigns on the foreign houses of Tiron, Fontevrault, and Cluny[174]
proves clearly how insensibly the “Treasury at Winchester” was
superseded by the “Exchequer at London” as the place of payment. This
is especially the case with Tiron, where Henry I.’s original grant,
made about the middle of his reign, provides for payment “de thesauro
meo, in festo Sancti Michaelis, _Wintonie_.”[175] Under Richard I.
this becomes payable “at Michaelmas from his exchequer at London.”[176]
Documents between the two show us intermediate stages.
Precisely the same gradual process is seen in the parallel development
of the chamberlainship of the “Exchequer” from that of the “Treasury.”
Just as Henry II., shortly before his accession, confirmed the grant
to Tiron as “de thesauro Wintonie,”[177] so he restored to William
Mauduit, at about the same time, “camerariam meam _thesauri_,” which
office was held by his descendants as a chamberlainship of the
_Exchequer_.
The ‘Dialogus’ shows us the Treasurer and the two chamberlains of the
Exchequer as the three inseparable Treasury officers. Domesday connects
the first with Winchester by showing us Henry “thesaurarius” as a
tenant-in-chief in Hampshire. I propose to show that it also connects
one of the chamberlains with that county. In that same invaluable but
unprinted charter of which I have spoken above, which was granted at
Leicester (1153) to William Mauduit, Duke Henry says:
Insuper etiam reddidi eidem camerariam meam thesauri cum
liberatione[178] et cum omnibus pertinentibus, castellum
scilicet de Porcestra ut supradiximus, et omnes terras ad
predictum camerariam et ad predictum castellum pertinentes, sive
sint in Anglia sive Normannia, sicut pater suus illam camerariam
cum pertinentibus melius habuit et sicut Robertus Maledoctus
frater suus eam habebat die quo vivus fuit et mortuus.
This carries back the ‘cameraria thesauri’ (‘_illam_ camerariam’)
to the Domesday tenant, whose son Robert occurs in the earlier
Winchester Survey, and, though dead in 1130, is mentioned on the Roll
of that year (p. 37), in connection with the Treasury in Normandy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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