At the earliest possible moment an effort was made to revive the working of the Exchequer. Its records were for some time previous to the end of the war in the possession of Louis, and were restored only on the conclusion of peace in the middle of September;[406] the session seems therefore to have been appointed for Martinmas,[407] instead of Michaelmas which was the customary date. Before Martinmas came, however, it was found, apparently, that some of the sheriffs could not get their accounts ready by the appointed day; and ultimately they seem to have been allowed to bring them up at various times from November, 1217, till a fortnight after Easter, 1218.[408] The accounts thus rendered were those for the first half of the seventeenth (fiscal) year of King John, from Michaelmas, 1214, to Easter, 1215; in other words, the last fiscal half-year completed before the outbreak of war between the barons and the King.[409] For the second half of that year, and for the whole of the two succeeding years up to Michaelmas, 1217, no accounts were ever rendered or demanded; the first Pipe Roll of Henry III is the roll of his second year, from Michaelmas, 1217, to Michaelmas, 1218, and it contains no mention of arrears.[410] This arrangement was both practical and equitable. The accounts for 1215–1217 must in many cases, through no fault of the persons responsible for them, have been in a confusion impossible to disentangle; some of the shires had been entirely in the possession of the King’s enemies; to many of the sheriffs and other Crown bailiffs the King must have been really more in debt than they were to him. With a budget thus restricted and a treasury thus exhausted the Marshal had to carry on the King’s government and pay the indemnity which he had promised to Louis.